University of Notre Dame teaming up with Gary to redevelop city's downtown

Notre Dame is teaming up with Gary in an effort to redevelop and revitalize the city's downtown.

The initiative is designed to help businesses grow and residents thrive.

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Blight is nearly everywhere you look in downtown Gary.

For example, a crumbling, abandoned church sits right next to an apartment building, where many senior citizens live.

"If you look at that structure, that gives you some context of how beautiful Gary still is, but how beautiful it once was," Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said.

And Melton, a native of Gary, said plans are underway to build a new and improved downtown.

City officials announced the first phase of a revitalization project Tuesday.

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It's a collaboration with Notre Dame's School of Architecture's Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative.

"Together, we will create a vision and an action plan for the future to provide opportunity, hope and pride of place," said Marianne Cusato, with the University of Notre Dame.

Gary officials say a vibrant downtown is crucial to the economic vitality of the city; and that, for too long, there was no investment in the area.

"This collaboration with Notre Dame School of Architecture provides us the opportunity to plan broader, more walkable, mixed-use downtown, creating a more robust environment than the traditional corridor development that existed here along Broadway and Fifth Avenue," said Chris Harris, director of redevelopment for Gary.

Starting in August, there will be listening sessions, during which Gary residents can share their ideas for revitalization. That input will ultimately be incorporated into an action plan.

Implementing it will take years.

"You have members of the public who remember Gary from before the losses, and have fought to preserve the history structures in that memory," Cusato said.

Notre Dame's School of Architecture has similar collaborations with other Midwest towns within a 100-mile radius of the school, with a focus on making community members an integral part in revitalizing their hometowns.