Saturday, June 17, 2006

Ft. Wayne Taps Mansur For $70 Million Residential Redevelopment Plan

The Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette is reporting today that the City of Ft. Wayne has selected Indianapolis-based Mansur Real Estate Services "to help manage and develop Renaissance Pointe, the community revitalization project aimed at improving one of Fort Wayne’s poorest neighborhoods." Mansur no doubt touted its management of the Fall Creek Place neighborhood in Indianapolis to win the contract. Had the City of Ft. Wayne bothered to do any due diligence they would have learned that there are plenty of homeowners in Fall Creek that would have less than glowing comments to share with them about Mansur's management of that project.

The city is right to undertake this project, but they should have looked for a company better able to do the job. It's always disappointing to see poor performance rewarded. The article doesn't mention how much Mansur is being paid for its role, but the City of Indianapolis in my opinion over-paid the firm, which made as much or more from each home built in Fall Creek as the homebuilders because of a ridiculously pro-development fee agreement the City awarded to Mansur.

1 comment:

credo said...

The city is right to undertake this project, but they should have looked for a company better able to do the job.


Fort Wayne leaders are not original thinkers. They went to Indy and saw Fall Creek and said, and now an redevelopment for our urban center. They are trying to get wealthy raced white folks to move into an area that has nothing.

The $70 Millions is the estimated cost to revitalize the area. Of course they dont't have $70 millions more like $4,1000,000.

The city is trying to attract investors to invest $70 million of the needed money. Maybe the city will get lucky and get a deal like the toll road. But I doubt it, especially when our city was voted the dumbest city in the country.