HyettPalma Recommends DTH to Implement Downtown Action Agenda

Date: 2/06/2002
By Lori Henson
Tribune-Star

Todd Nation, owner of BookNation and president of Downtown Terre Haute Inc., has a lot invested in downtown. It's where he lives, works and spends a lot of his free time.

And he's a little frustrated at the pace of change in the neighborhood he calls home. But he and the rest of Downtown Terre Haute Inc. keep pulling for change, with several recent successes and more in the works.

So Nation's group of downtown business people seemed to Doyle Hyett the best choice to put into action his firm's recommendations for revitalizing downtown. Hyett announced to the public Monday night his agenda and his choice of an expanded Downtown Terre Haute Inc. to spearhead the effort.

"It is the only local organization whose mission is solely Downtown's comprehensive enhancement," HyettPalma's study reads.

HyettPalma's agenda is the result of two months of study and community surveys, as part of a program involving 11 Indiana cities that signed up for Indiana Association of Cities and Towns' "Indiana Downtown" program.

The cities include Lafayette, Warsaw, Warren, Fort Wayne, Bluffton, Jeffersonville, Delphi and Aurora.

In Terre Haute, Nation has been a vocal champion of downtown's revitalization. He helped lay out a vision statement that described a downtown similar to HyettPalma's study, although less specific, in 1997. He welcomes the HyettPalma study results, he said, especially if they accelerate progress in downtown.

But the suggestions Hyett read Monday aren't new. And some are already in the works.

The pedestrian-friendly, architecturally consistent, culturally rich and populated downtown is going to happen, Nation said, but perhaps the HyettPalma study is the incentive all leaders need to "get on the same page."

Mayor Judy Anderson has assured Nation and other downtown stakeholders that her administration will use the study to speed revitalization. And she said Monday that she will do whatever she can to help the group that takes the lead on HyettPalma's suggestions.

"I'm for whoever can keep this ball going," she said.

Nation said city government's participation and excitement inspired by the study could be the catalyst to complete projects long in limbo, such as streetscape architecture, signage directing people to downtown and other beautification.

The rest of the city will benefit from that kind of excitement and change downtown, said Claudia Tanoos, assistant director of the Alliance for Growth and Progress, another group long involved with economic development in Terre Haute and downtown.

"Until it's revitalized, it will be difficult to get economic development" in the rest of the city, she said.

In her seven years with the Alliance, Tanoos said she has seen "all kinds" of studies of the city suggesting ways to develop economically. She said there appears to be community spirit and exceptional timing behind this study that sets it apart.

"I think all the right people and all the right players in the community were at the meeting" on Monday, she said.

Now the job is for Nation's group and other community leaders to read the 200-page report before deciding how its recommendations should be implemented with the cooperation of business and city leaders and representatives of Indiana State University.

"That's the hard part of this whole thing, is patience," Nation said.