The Adam Benjamin Metro Center has been Gary's transit hub for the past 40 years. It's also a major part of the city's plans for the future.
During Thursday's anniversary celebration, Mayor Eddie Melton touted access to transportation as one of the city's key assets. "We have both rail — we have both highway behind us," Melton said. "We have all modes of transportation within just a couple of mile radius at the core of our city, in the city of Gary, Indiana."
Now, the city is taking steps to build upon that. The state has allocated matching funding to rebuild the Metro Center's South Shore Line station, under a law Melton helped author during his last year in the Indiana Senate. He said it's been an important part of the city's downtown planning discussions led by the Notre Dame School of Architecture.
"One of the takeaways was making sure that the new station will be a centerpiece to downtown, and that feedback came from the public," Melton told reporters following Thursday's event.
Melton also said the city will begin demolishing some of the most blighted structures downtown in a few weeks, funded, in part, by the same legislation he helped author. "So as people are coming to take a Greyhound or they're jumping on a South Shore, they'll feel safer," Melton said. "They'll see a cleaner and more secured city of Gary."
While the city focuses on revitalizing its downtown around transportation, the Gary Public Transportation Corporation is focusing on connectivity throughout the city and beyond. "Once you get off that train, that plane, that boat, you need to get on a bus," said GPTC Interim General Manager Denise Comer Dillard. "And it ain't that hard to do, and we need to keep it moving."
She said GPTC is aggressively educating potential funders of the need for investment in bus service. She said without a bus system, the Region would miss out on opportunities for economic growth.
