In the last three years, Invent Tomorrow has organized trips to three cities that turned around their downtowns. Now Executive Director Cheri Becker said it may be time to bring lessons about revitalization to the community at large.

In the next week or two, she said, she would like to gather people who visited Greenville, S.C.; Providence, R.I.; or Chattanooga, Tenn., to pare down all they've learned about other cities' revivals into “three or five or six things” that could help transform Fort Wayne. Then Invent Tomorrow might bring in an expert from a city that turned itself around to present ideas to Fort Wayne as a whole.

If so, that might answer skeptical observers who wonder what impact Invent Tomorrow has had through its trips to other cities.

Becker points to the new restaurant downtown, J.K. O'Donnell's, 121 W. Wayne St., as an example of a business directly inspired by one of these trips to other cities. More broadly, seeing revived downtowns helps “build ambassadors for change,” she said.

Those veterans of trips to cities with vibrant downtowns may have influenced much else going on in Fort Wayne, she said, from widening sidewalks to designing new streetscapes to encouraging the North River Task Force to aim high in planning how OmniSource's land downtown could be used.

Becker said that if Invent Tomorrow organizes another trip next year, it will be to research a different topic, such as educational reform.

Although taxpayer funds are not used for the trips, she said, some of those who attend might have employers pay the roughly $1,000 fee to go.

In this year's trip, six of 26 people attending were Fort Wayne city employees. Becker didn't know whether any of the city employees attending had their way paid by city government.

Elected officials City Councilman Tom Smith, D-1st, and Allen County Councilwoman Paula Hughes also attended.