There’s already some art to be found in downtown Warsaw.
But what if there were more? More statues, more murals, more live performances?
For two hours Thursday evening at Mad Anthony’s Lake City Taphouse, Main Street Warsaw and Warsaw Public Arts Commission (WPAC) hosted a Cultural Arts District open house to gather more input on what kind of art the public wanted to see and where in downtown Warsaw.
Terry Sweeney, Main Street Warsaw director of development, explained, “What we’re doing is giving people an opportunity to one, learn about the survey and take that, but then to take a look at the boards and kind of vote on ‘we think this is a priority’, or ‘this isn’t.’ And then add their own thoughts to help guide this planning process, which is going to establish a cultural development plan to kind of make this a more culturally-focused district, and grow what we call the creative economy.”
The creative economy includes such things as the culinary arts, visual arts, performance art, design, fashion “and those types of things. So it includes for-profit and not-for-profit creative industries and businesses and individuals.”
The downtown area is essentially the Commercial-4 district bordered by Ind. 15 to the east, Columbia Street to the west, Winona Avenue to the south and Main Street to the north.
“That’s kind of what we’re talking about loosely. But, a part of the downtown is also the parks area, so we have some discussion with that as well,” Sweeney said.
Once a cultural development plan is finalized, that will be used to submit projects for the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) grants and other similar opportunities.
“This all evolved out of our 2030 (Strategic) Plan that we just launched. So we say we want to be a Culturally-Focused District, but what does that look like? We want the public to tell us a little bit about what they’d like to see, so that’s what this engagement process is all about,” Sweeney said.
Josh Lapp, consultant with Designing Local, is leading the planning process. Designing Local also is leading the regional planning process for the READI regions for South Bend/Elkhart, North Central and Lafayette. “So they have great expertise and are nationally known,” Sweeney said.
Lapp explained Designing Local was hired by Main Street Warsaw to develop the plan.
“We kind of do this work all over the country, so we do arts and culture planning, urban planning, landscape architecture, so this is kind of right in our wheelhouse. And we actually developed the Fort Wayne Public Art Plan in 2018-19, and we’re working on a number of arts and culture plans through the READI program at the state level. So that’s why they selected us, because we have that experience and we’re working on other projects like this,” Lapp explained.
The planning process is to be completed by July 1, so projects can be submitted for the READI grant portal by about July, Sweeney said.
“The plan to implement will take years, but the planning process is going to be short,” he stated.
WPAC has existed since 2015. They’ve brought in temporary and permanent art installments to the city, said Suzie Light, WPAC member. Those included the temporary Seward Johnson statutes twice, as well as the permanent pieces titled “Lifting Up,” “Radiance” and “Reflection.” They’ve also led the renovation of the Milt Holmgrain structures that have been placed in city parks.
“So we’re excited with this opportunity to look at how downtown can be more supportive of the creative economy, which is not just artists, is not just not-for-profits; it’s for-profit and videographers and writers ... so that whole creative economy in Indiana is huge and there’s all kinds of studies that talk about what that brings to the quality of life in Indiana. And we want to capture that here in Warsaw,” she said.
For every dollar that is spent in artistic pursuit in Kosciusko County, “the statistic is that it’s multiplied by six more dollars,” Light stated.
As an example, she said the Wagon Wheel Center for the Arts is a treasure in the community.
“Fifty-three percent of the season ticketholders come from out of our county - 53! So we’re encouraging our county to support more of the Wagon Wheel, but we’re very thankful that we have those residents from other places coming here,” she said.
Could the downtown help support the Wagon Wheel by providing an opportunity for them to give street performances? Could they be a part of the Coffee Klatches? Could they be participants at restaurants by providing music?
“Could we take a space that is not currently activated in downtown Warsaw and make it Wagon Wheel West? Could it be a place where they have their youth performers or Community Theatre or improv things happening? So it’s exciting when you think about the opportunities available to us,” she said.
Lapp said what he’s seen and heard about Warsaw as of Thursday was “that there’s a really solid foundation. There’s really great businesses. There’s a lot of really good assets that a lot of communities this size would love to have in terms of restaurants and boutiques and galleries and really cool things. But there’s really a lot of opportunity to build upon that and also bring in more of the kind of entertainment life, live performance factor into downtown. There’s a number of vacant spaces that could be utilized for performances. And there’s maybe some opportunities to better connect folks.”
Better connections might mean better connections to the lake, improving alleyways to get people to walk back and forth between the businesses or simply getting people to slow down and view the downtown as a destination.
If anyone was unable to attend Thursday’s open house, they can read more and fill out the survey online at warsawartsplan.com.
“Take the survey,” Sweeney encouraged. “Creating a cultural district is about quality of life. It’s also economic development strategy, designed to drive visits to downtown, create jobs and create investment in downtown. So, this will help guide those investments of what we’d like to see as a community.”
Light said, “Art improves the quality of our life. It helps our employers retain people. It brings joy and it’s just amazing what could happen here.”