Mr. Main Street: do Indiana downtowns have a savior? It just may be Scott Pitcher and his Kokomo-based Fortune Management.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy

CALL IT VISION, PASSION OR PURE GUTS. Whatever it was in 1986 that sparked 33-year-old electrician Scott Pitcher to eye the potential in an old downtown Kokomo building and turn it into a renovated landmark, it was just the beginning.

Four Indiana downtowns, a couple hundred building projects and dozens of awards later, he's still leading the charge for revitalization of the state's city centers.

"If you're going to get jobs that bring in creative workers, which is today's economy, you have to have nice downtowns," says Pitcher, now 49 and president of 100-employee Fortune Management Inc. That's the company he founded for his first rehab project.

"Communities that are winning jobs are those investing in themselves," he says. "They are realizing that the best economic-development money they can spend is a dollar that makes a community a better place to live."

The energy he sparked in Kokomo, where this Taylor High School graduate has lived since he was a year old, has since struck Marion, Anderson and Lawrenceburg, with another four Indiana downtowns in the pipeline.

ARTIST FIRST, DEVELOPER SECOND

What Pitcher brings to a community is a lot more than contractors, says John K. Roberts, project consultant for the Lawrenceburg Main Street Association.

"My assessment of Scott is he is an artist first, a creative genius, and a developer second," Roberts says. "When he comes into town, he's like an artist with a palette. He visualizes something and he wants to make a fundamental change. Development is a tool that enables him to do the artistic things he does. He's a very creative guy."

"I'm somewhat of a contrarian from a business perspective," Pitcher admits. "I'm attracted to areas that I feel have been neglected."

His is a mop-up strategy. "We bit an area and we buy the ugliest buildings and make them the prettiest. We turn them around and create entirely new personalities. We accomplish this through a high volume of Class A architecture. It's not about a new awning. We completely re-do the building."

Pitcher is passionate about the benefits that work can yield. "The state of Indiana has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, and that lowers your self esteem. We go into communities where self esteem has been lost through job loss and we try to rebuild that."

"He's on a mission to change physical structures. He's like a sculptor," Roberts says. "He's a brilliant guy and very, very good for the community."

A "ONE-STOP REVITALIZATION SHOP"

Fortune's services range from consultations on downtown revitalization to aesthetic, economic and emotional revitalization of a...