Crews break ground on downtown hotel

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - After months of uncertainty about the future of the project, work is officially underway on the hotel at Harrison Square.

Work on a Courtyard by Marriott is now about 6 months behind schedule; a delay that the developer says won't matter in the long run.

The groundbreaking at the site on Monday morning was largely ceremonial, with preliminary work actually getting underway in May. The celebration was a big one, though, for the city and developers who persevered through some serious financial challenges to make the project a reality.

The 250-room Courtyard by Marriott project was $20-million short for quite some time. As the economic climate deteriorated, the credit crunched forced the project developer, White Lodging, and it's lenders to be very creative with financing packages.

"It's been a difficult process to say the least," said White Lodging CEO Deno Yiankes. "At the same time it makes this day even more enjoyable because we all had to work extra hard."

Coming through at the eleventh hour were seven local banks who decided to put their financial support behind the project. The lead bank is Centier, and along with STAR Financial Bank, Salin Bank, TOWER Bank, First Federal Bank, Grabill Bank, Lake City Bank, and Chase Bank, they were able to grant the financing for the project. Now, construction is underway, putting 50 to 75 people to work every day for the next 16 months. More than half of them local.

"This is a project that's coming online just at a point when we need the jobs, when we need the economic development," said former Fort Wayne Mayor Graham Richard, who largely spearheaded the Harrison Square project in it's conceptual stage during his administration.

City officials stressed the importance of the hotel to the Grand Wayne Center, saying the additional 250 rooms will put the convention center at an advantage when it competes for business against other Indiana cities, like South Bend and Evansville.

The ballpark is in place, the hotel underway, but what about the condos that are supposed to be on the northwest corner of the Harrison Square? Fort Wayne Director of Redevelopment Greg Leatherman says they're still pretty much up in the air.

"We continue to talk to [the developer]. They continue the dialogue with us," said Leatherman, declining to expand on how the talks were progressing.

The hotel was originally set to open in the Spring of 2010 to be ready to serve summer guests and people coming into town for ball games. Now it's set to open at the end of the summer, employing more than 100 people by August 2010.