City spotlight: Wabash.

• Author: Slacian, Joe
• Position: Wabash River, Indiana

Because of progressive thinking, the city of Wabash was thrust into the spotlight--actually a light from the Brush Electric Light Co.--the night of March 31, 1880.

Thousands gathered around the courthouse that night as the Brush light illuminated the early spring sky. Wabash took its place in history as the first electrically lighted city in the world.

Though the Brush lights have long since been replaced, the light of progressiveness still burns brightly in the city, as evidenced by such things as a $17 million expansion at the Honeywell Center, a community center built in the early 1940s by heating-and-cooling pioneer and Wabash native Mark Honeywell.

Begun in August 1992, the expansion project--which will add some 100,000 square feet to the existing facility--includes a 1,400-seat, state-of-the art theater and an 111-seat restaurant. It will open next April.

While actual work has been going on about 16 months, planning dates back to as early as 1983. The Honeywell Foundation, which oversees the center, sought to improve the existing auditorium that also serves as a basketball court and banquet hall, but couldn't afford any of the proposed changes.

In 1988, a group approached the foundation with a proposal. "They knew we were interested in a new theater," foundation Executive Director Don Knapp says. "And they said, 'We'll donate most of the cost of the theater, if the foundation will sponsor the project and raise the balance.'"

Some 145 donors gave $14.2 million for the construction work. Another $3 million will be used for an operating endowment.

The center, already a stop on tours for business prospects, can only serve to enhance the city's charm, says Larry Hickman, executive director of Wabash Economic Development Corp., also known as WEDCOR.

Hickman had an artist's rendering of the building on display at a recent trade show. "We had a lot of questions of 'What's that?' And when you tell someone that a town of 12,000 is putting a $17 million theater up, they don't believe it. And then you tell them where the biggest part of the money is coming from, they still don't believe it."

The Honeywell Center also will serve as a main stopping point for tourists the county is hoping to attract in coming years. The Wabash County Convention & Visitors Bureau was formed earlier this year and is benefiting from an innkeeper's tax.

Just as the look of the center is changing daily, so too is the look of the downtown, a mixture of retail stores and...