PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Visiting Greenville, S.C., a year ago, architect Ed Welling recalls streets lined with trees, people dining outdoors and infectious energy everywhere. This week in Providence, he will see how riverside development has reinvigorated this historic city and possibly pick up ideas to implement in Fort Wayne.

Welling and other local leaders visited Greenville last year because they wanted firsthand immersion into that Southern city’s turnaround.

Now he will learn firsthand how this East Coast city has flourished. Its once paved-over waterways have been opened up and are lined with public parks and commercial development.

The Fort Wayne civic group Invent Tomorrow organizes the yearly visits to comparable cities. Each attendee pays his or her own way; taxpayer dollars are not used. Beginning Thursday, 31 government officials and businesspeople will spend about three days in Provi- dence. About half made the Greenville trip last year.

So what, if anything, has happened in Fort Wayne as a result of the visit to Greenville last year?

♦Welling said a competition for the new design of Calhoun Street is one example. Three downtown firms were contacted to submit preliminary designs of what Calhoun Street could look like after conversion into a two-way street.

Dan Carmody of the Downtown Improvement District said a task force will hear presentations next week.

Welling’s firm, Grinsfelder Associates Architects, is involved, and he said the idea falls in line with what Greenville leaders expressed – hire the best.

“One of the things they recommended was hiring the best people possible, and one of the ways to find your best people is to hold a design competition,” Welling said.

♦In 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave Greenville its Great American Main Street Award. Its Main Street is layered with flowers and trees, and the Fort Wayne visitors noticed.

Fort Wayne is in the midst of a half-million-dollar landscaping project for about eight city blocks. Tom Cain, senior urban designer for the city, said such plans had been discussed years before the Greenville visit, but a few people who made the trip, such as Deputy Mayor Mark Becker, gave Cain ideas.

Calls for river development are nothing new in Fort Wayne. The debate over how and where to build along the water dates back at least to the 1970s when Greenway plans took shape.

The idea for a walkway such as the Greenway even dates back to 1910.

In Rhode Island’s capital city, the group will primarily focus on river development and local higher education’s role in community development. A 2002 survey from Invent Tomorrow showed just more than half of the 1,200 Fort Wayne residents surveyed said reviving Fort Wayne’s three rivers – Maumee, St. Marys and St. Joseph – is important.

A downtown blueprint released in October 2005 by the city recommended development, possibly retail or restaurant, in the southwest corner of Lawton Park.

But with river development in Fort Wayne, a major concern is flooding. Rod Renkenberger, executive director of the Maumee River Basin Commission, said the city has been purchasing land in flood plains to prevent flooding.

Building in the flood plain would be counterproductive, he said.

“We are trying to open the flood plains back up so they can function with what their natural intended use was,” Renkenberger said.

Despite these concerns, Kathy Friend, an Invent Tomorrow board member and chief financial officer for Fort Wayne Community Schools, said she thinks riverfront development has some chance of moving forward.

“I think the fever is building in Fort Wayne to do the development,” Friend said. “I think the community turned its back on the rivers so long and having the ability to see what is going on in other cities and all, it is about the right time to do it.”