If downtown Fort Wayne were worse off, reaching a consensus on how to get better might come more easily. That's one lesson Lutheran Hospital CEO Joe Dorko learned when he joined the Invent Tomorrow trip to Chattanooga, Tenn., last week. That also helps explain why the Harrison Square project is so contentious.

In Chattanooga 20 years ago, “you had to do something, because it was getting desperate and dangerous,” Dorko said. From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, hearing bad news became a habit in Chattanooga, from learning that its air quality was among the worst in the nation to experiencing a sharp drop in its industrial employment.

Average income in Fort Wayne is still higher and poverty rates are lower than in Chattanooga. The erosion of Fort Wayne's prosperity has been gradual, spread out over more than 20 years.

“How do you create the impetus for change when so many people are satisfied with the status quo?” Dorko asked.

A good first step: Stop regarding opposition to Harrison Square as unthinking obstructionism. Even people who want to see downtown bloom again may not think a baseball stadium and a new hotel are the best stimuli for new development.

And because tens of millions of taxpayer dollars will be used to fund Harrison Square, elected officials aren't insulated from political heat the same way that early proponents of revitalization in Chattanooga were. In Chattanooga, foundations and businesses paid most of the early costs.

No one should think Harrison Square will be the kind of draw that Chattanooga's first revitalization attraction, the Tennessee Aquarium, is. It averages about 1 million visitors a year. And even when tourism takes off, jobs created are disproportionately low-wage jobs.

Nevertheless, John Sampson, president and CEO of the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership,said Harrison Square can contribute to a rebound downtown and beyond.

Projects such as Harrison Square “don't create a lot of high-value jobs, but they create a place where people want to live, so that we can speak as highly of ourselves as they do in Chattanooga,” Sampson said.

People are still divided about the importance of reviving downtown Fort Wayne and how best to accomplish that, but at least a new consensus has emerged: Regional cooperation makes sense.

The clearest evidence is the creation and funding of the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership in 2006.

Bringing small towns and Fort Wayne together didn't come automatically.

Before the creation of that partnership, Mayor Graham Richard and members of his staff met with small-town political and business leaders to persuade them to try economic development in cooperation with Fort Wayne. Business leaders — for example, Steel Dynamics Inc. Chairman and CEO Keith Busse — made the rounds of economic-development groups in counties surrounding Allen, preaching the same message.

Now there are more signs of growing economic cooperation. Democratic mayoral candidate Tom Henry has proposed a regional purchasing cooperative open to cities, towns, counties, school districts and other units of government; his opponent, Republican Matt Kelty, says it's a good idea.

During his mayoral campaign, Henry has attended regional economic-development events and has met with mayors of other cities, such as Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis, about the plan.

In March, Grant and Wabash counties joined the regional marketing partnership, Sampson said. Leaders in those counties are trying to get the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to move them into Fort Wayne's administrative region, too.

Ideally, Fort Wayne's downtown can become an important business and entertainment hub, too — if it can overcome its peculiar handicap of not being run-down enough to persuade people that it needs help.

“We have a presentable downtown. It's clean. It's safe. … But we don't have a lot of economic activity down there,” Sampson said.