Revitalized Atlanta a blueprint for Fort Wayne

By Ron Shawgo, The Journal Gazette

ATLANTA - You don't have to look out the ninth-floor windows of the sparkling new Southern Co. building to know that the profile of this city - burned by Sherman's army, birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr. and home to the 1996 summer Olympics - is dramatically changing.

But gazing out one of the Southern Co.'s carpet-to-ceiling walls of glass gives some perspective to the shifting landscape below. And here, on the ninth floor, you'll find a major force behind that change and a hopeful player in reshaping downtown Fort Wayne, 650 miles north.

From these offices Barry Real Estate Cos. overlooks a nine-block chunk of prime real estate it owns in what the company has called the largest plot of land being developed in any major U.S. city.

While comparisons of Atlanta and Fort Wayne might be tenuous, the kind of mixed-use projects Barry and others are pursuing in Atlanta - those that combine offices, homes, stores and restaurants - is the kind Fort Wayne leaders see as a catalyst for downtown revival.