Gary: Ambitious projects raise the city's profile.

• Author: Skertic, Mark
• Position: Focus - Brief Article

No one is going to invest in his city if it isn't willing to spend money on itself, Gary Mayor Scott King says with the sound of certainty in his voice.

That's why he makes no apologies for an unprecedented spending spree intended to enhance his city and raise its profile. "Public investment, appropriately targeted, will trigger private investment," says King, mayor since 1996.

City money has gone to purchase $250,000 worth of tickets to support Gary's minor-league basketball team, $2.3 million was spent to bring the Miss USA pageant to town and $45 million committed for a minor-league baseball stadium to house the South Shore RailCats, a team set to begin play in 2003.

King has begun talks with riverboat casino mogul Don Barden about a possible public-private partnership to build a second convention center in the city, this one near the gaming boats. The city's current facility, the downtown Genesis Convention Center, underwent a $5 million facelift in 2000, in part to get it ready for Miss USA and the Steelheads of the Continental Basketball Association.

An ambitious undertaking still on the drawing board is a new downtown media center, to be designed by Robert Venturi, a Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, King envisions the building being home to technology companies as well as radio and TV studios.

That's all in addition to major city projects that are rebuilding streets, razing abandoned buildings and improving the city's infrastructure.

The mayor wants more entertainment on the lakeshore; more new homes in Gary neighborhoods. "The southern shore of Lake Michigan is far superior to the western shore--the dunes, the general configuration, the slope of the beach," King says, adding that those are features the city needs to tell people about.

Economic development is not about building businesses, he says: "I've had people tell me I should just build some stores--well, I'm not in the store business. I've got to convince the people who are in the store business to come to where people gather. Minor-league baseball is a way to get 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people together and expose them to an area they might not otherwise come to."

King, who was a local attorney before winning the mayor's office, wants the focus to be on efforts to reinvigorate northwest Indiana's largest city. Gary has about 103,000 residents, but jobs and investment are needed to make things better for the people who live there.

Business has shown an interest, attracted by...