The City of Fort Wayne announced a new phase of development at the Landing downtown. City leaders said they plan to invest another $20 million to build what they called the “Landing Exchange” building.
Fort Wayne Community Development Director Jonathan Leist said that money will come from "a variety of sources including developer debt and equity, federal HOME funds, tax credits and an economic development revenue bond pledged from project tax increment (TIF)."
The Landing is a block of historic buildings in downtown Fort Wayne off Harrison and Columbia Streets that the city has been working on redeveloping into commercial and residential real estate since 2017.
Fort Wayne Mayor Sharon Tucker described this development plan as “here we grow again.”
“We felt like it would be a great fit in the plans that we have for downtown,” Tucker said. “We also know that there is housing that’s needed, and so the ability to have additional housing come on, of course, is a win for our community as a whole.”
Officials said The Landing Exchange will be phase III of that redevelopment effort.
The Landing Exchange is planned to be a building at the corner of Harrison and Columbia streets that will include 40 housing units with eight of them designated as affordable housing. The ground floor will have space for more commercial businesses.
That plot of land is the final empty lot on the property, but Tucker said she's hesitant to say this is the last of the development at the Landing.
“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe we’ll go across the street and figure out something there.”
Leist said the first step in the approval process for the Landing Exchange was the Redevelopment Commission passing three resolutions at its meeting.
“The three are resetting the TIF district on just this parcel,” Leist said. “So, it currently is in a TIF: the Riverfront I Columbia Street TIF district. However, that district has been around for seven or eight years, and so to collect tax increment on the site for 25 years, we’d like to reset the timeframe for it basically.”
Leist said the second resolution is approval of an economic development agreement for the proposed project.
Leist said the third resolution is a pledge to use TIF funds from this project and other uncommitted TIF dollars at the Landing to support an economic development bond for the project.
The Redevelopment Commission passed all three resolutions at its meeting in the early evening on Monday.
Leist said the Fort Wayne City Council and the Indiana Economic Development Commission will also need to approve the project for it to move forward. Neither have it listed as an agenda item for upcoming meetings, but Leist said if both give their approval, he expects to break ground on the Landing Exchange building this spring.
