Sept. 14, 2004
| By Michelle L. Quinn / Post-Tribune correspondent |
GARY — The city is looking to take the Grand Calumet River dredging one step further by turning it into a riverwalk.
City leaders are inviting the business community to lend a hand in the riverwalk.
The Gary Riverfront Project would convert the area from Bridge Street to Broadway, along the river, into a recreational area with room for retail businesses.
That’s the plan outlined by T.J. Holsen and Jesse Elam of the Chicago-based Delta Institute during the Chamber of Commerce’s monthly lunch meeting held Monday at the Genesis Convention Center.
If the plan is accepted, they are predicting a boost of 20 percent to 25 percent of property values in the Ambridge-Mann area.
“The area has been overlooked for so long, and with good reason: It’s been contaminated,” Holsen said. “It was dangerous, it was an eyesore, and it wasn’t incorporated into the economic life. But now that it’s cleaned up, it has the potential to be an enormous economic engine for the community.”
The area is divided into three distinct areas, Elam said. At Bridge Street, the plan calls for renovating a boat launch already on the property in order to create river access.
The other two areas, one at Ambridge Park and the other at the South Shore Redevelopment area at U.S. Steel Gary Works’ C Lot, would become a riverwalk and a park with a museum devoted to the steel industry’s history. But unlike the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Gary’s riverwalk would build on top of the already existing landscape instead of encasing it in concrete, and would connect to the Green Links Trail system.
Also, the South Shore Redevelopment area would be renamed Gateway Park and would feature the existing lagoons behind the viaducts of U.S. Steel.
The viaducts would receive an overhaul with steel adornments and a giant mural of the lakeshore painted on the concrete.
With those improvements, the property values could go up exponentially, Holsen said.
“(The Grand Calumet Clean-up) is, to my knowledge, the largest river clean-up in the country, and looking at property values around there, the river has had a negative impact for so long,” he said. “By removing the negative impact, our economist (at the Delta Institute) predicted a 20 percent to 25 percent increase in property values around there. It would have a tangible impact.”
The cost of the projects has yet to be determined, however, because each project would be done individually, Holsen said. He added that the City would take the lead on the project, and then hopefully businesses would take over and develop the area.
The group has been in talks with Mayor Scott King, according to David Wright, director for the City’s Department of Planning, and plans to start a dialogue with U.S. Steel are forthcoming.
“Outside of Broadway, the closest retail area to the river is Fifth and Buchanan,” Wright said. “This has tremendous potential.”
Cynthia Powers, of Powers Century 21, would welcome even a fraction of that potential to the Gary.
“If -- no, when -- done, it’s going to be phenomenal,” Powers said. “The communities contiguous to the river have been stable, but if we put the riverwalk there, the mental uplift will be there, too.”
Contact Michelle L. Quinn