Fort Wayne has long hosted a thriving arts community, readily apparent to those who participate but too often unnoticed by others. That’s about to change.

Look for 2012 to be the year of the arts, thrust into public consciousness by development of a downtown arts campus decades in the making. With a high-profile hub centered on Main Street, the city now has the foundation for cultural-based growth that Arts United Executive Director Jim Sparrow sees as expression of the region’s entrepreneurial and creative roots.

Think Vera Bradley. A publicly traded corporation with net revenues of more than $366 million in fiscal 2011, it began with inspiration for a more attractive luggage design.

Think Sweetwater Sound. One of the largest musical equipment dealers in the nation, it began here with a mobile recording studio.

“We can develop Fort Wayne and northeast Indiana as a creative industry incubator,” Sparrow said. “We’ve already seen the community come back with a very entrepreneurial nature, based on Fort Wayne Metals and Vera Bradley and SDI – and the list goes on. We can do the same thing with the arts, because it’s not just about quality of life. It’s about generating opportunities for interaction – socially, entrepreneurially – as well as business.”

The opportunities grew this past year as the Auer Center for Arts & Culture joined the expanding downtown arts corridor. The arts campus is actually realization of a 50-year-old design by renowned American architect Louis I. Kahn, who designed the Arts United Center. He envisioned a six-building arts complex surrounding a central plaza. The theater and art museum were the only buildings completed because of the cost, but the new Auer Center across Main Street advances the idea of a downtown arts campus, which Sparrow says was unheard of at the time outside of the Lincoln Center complex in New York City.

Downtown lure

What the new Auer Center brings is the critical mass needed to make the cultural venues a downtown destination. With the Museum of Art’s expansion completed and improvements made to the Arts United Center plaza, the area becomes a focal point for special events such as Taste of the Arts and Three Rivers Festival’s Art in the Park. But Sparrow sees an energy that extends beyond one-day events.

“This corridor and what we’re doing down here allows for more constant activity,” he explained. “We’ve tried to tie things together to make this more pedestrian-friendly … trying to get people out of their cars to come down to the neighborhood, so that if you park behind the museum or you park (at the Auer Center), it’s, ‘Hey, I can park anywhere down here and go into the museum or to get something to eat at the bakery while my kid has a ballet class. Or I can come down on a Friday night after work and grab something to eat here and walk over to Cinema Center.’ Now, you begin to see the potential, paired with Club Soda and Hall’s and what we hope will continue to develop as this restaurant piece here, it becomes a neighborhood flavored by arts and culture.”

Dan O’Connell, president and CEO of Visit Fort Wayne, said the new Auer Center lends “density” to the area, building its identity as a cultural draw. Cultural activities have long been recognized by the tourism bureau as appealing to out-of-town visitors. Visit Fort Wayne routinely markets cultural events, O’Connell said, particularly in the winter months to coincide with the season for organizations such as the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

The economic clout of those events is considerable, he said. That’s apparent in a new economic impact study on the Embassy Theatre alone. The survey, by IPFW’s Community Research Institute, found that 34 percent of visitors to the historic theater were from outside of Allen County and they annually spend more than $1 million here.

“People are in a different mindset when they travel,” O’Connell said. “People from town are likely to be cost-conscious. Visitors, on the other hand, will eat at a higher-end restaurant; they’ll stay overnight; they’ll buy the souvenirs.”

Sparrow points to cities such as Asheville, N.C.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Greenville, S.C., as cities that have capitalized on culture as a draw for visitors. But it’s Grand Rapids, Mich. – a frequent comparison point for Fort Wayne – that offers the best example. To its inventory of downtown arts venues, the city in 2009 added a three-week public art competition, ArtPrize. This past September, the event drew 320,000 visitors and added $15.4 million to the local economy.

What’s ahead

Aside from adding an anchor to the downtown arts campus, the Auer Center allows Arts United to support more efficient use of arts dollars, according to Sparrow. A shared business services center in the building provides copying services for the agency, Artlink and the ballet, and a single receptionist directs visitors to each office. The collaboration allows more money to go directly to programming instead of overhead.

Soon, a community box office will be available. Patrons can drop by the center to buy tickets for a variety of local arts events, Sparrow said. There also are plans for Art Lab, an experimental theater addition.

But what the Arts United director is most excited about is the potential for the arts center to fuel new business. Fort Wayne currently has about 600 full-time positions tied to the arts, he said, with an annual economic impact of about $26 million.

An arts incubator – the cultural equivalent of the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center – could create more jobs. It’s designed to support the next small creative endeavor that could grow into a large and thriving business.

“We need to encourage that, because there are a lot of creative people in the region and in the Midwest who would benefit from that. I think Fort Wayne is positioned to do that,” he said. “I don’t think it’s completely embraced that yet, but it’s close – that’s why I think there’s a level of excitement here.”

Sparrow contrasts what is happening now with author Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” hype of a decade ago.

“It’s unrealistic to think – as sexy as it sounds – that someone is just going to pick a place to live just because they like it, and they are going to make it work. There is a reality to making a living and having an impact. It’s not just that they want to go to creative places – they want to go to creative places that are ready to go, that are ready to take off. I think a lot of communities may have missed the fundamental piece of creating a core industry, of providing the ability to make a living.”