Parking NIGHTMARE at Jefferson Pointe Shopping Mall

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law were in town for the weekend. They live in Hawaii and go to The Indianapolis 500 every year. They spent two days at our house and then went down to Indianapolis Saturday night.

We took them out to dinner at my favorite Fort Wayne restaurant, The Flattop Grill at Jefferson Pointe. I truly love the Flattop Grill. It is a great restaurant...

I do not go to the Flattop Grill very often because of its location. I live on the north side of Fort Wayne and I generally stay on the north side of Fort Wayne. I also hate hate the parking situation at Jefferson Pointe. Whoever designed the parking lot at the mall should be prosecuted for gross incompetence.

One of the things that I NEVER do unless I absolutely have to is drive around looking for a parking place. I generally park far away and walk. I do not mind walking and hate "trolling" for parking spaces.

I ALWAYS have a hard time parking at Jefferson Pointe. Some moron decided to build a bunch of restaurants in that area as well as a movie theatre. I ALWAYS have to "troll" for a parking space. There are no outlots that I can park in at Jefferson Pointe.

On another note I was actually shocked how many people were at Jefferson Pointe Friday night. The stores were full, the restaurants were full, and there were a lot of people enjoying the weather and walking around.

I know that there are some politicians in Fort Wayne who think we should spend tens if not hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to create a similar environment in downtown Fort Wayne... They just do not understand economic development... If we ever build up downtown this will hurt places like Jefferson Pointe and Glenbrook. I call these schemes "Economic Re-arrangement."

There is a fairly fixed amount of money that is spent in Fort Wayne. There are only three ways to increase the money spent in Fort Wayne:

1. Increase the income of those who live and shop in Fort Wayne. The ONLY way this can be done is to have a vibrant local economy with a lot of high paying jobs. This is hard to accomplish and certainly has NOT been successful to date. The best way to do this is to lower the tax rates and do away with our archaic tax abatement system that almost solely benefits large companies.

2. Attract people to Fort Wayne who normally go somewhere else to spend their money. The easiest way to do this would be to build a casino in downtown Fort Wayne. That would draw people from 100 miles away and give a HUGE boost to the local economy.

3. Lower the tax rates in Fort Wayne and downsize the government. The less money the government "takes" from us in taxes the more of our own money that we spend in the local economy.

Mike Sylvester