A milestone Thursday for the biggest downtown development project in Fort Wayne in decades.

We've talked about the Harrison Square project for months, but now it has moved into a whole new phase.

For the first time, we know with certainty that the project is moving full speed ahead.

The official groundbreaking took place before noon Thursday.

It provided Mayor Graham Richard and other civic leaders the chance to celebrate the formal beginning of construction.

The project includes a new baseball stadium for the Fort Wayne Wizards, plus a hotel, parking garage, condominiums and retail space.

One of the developers, a part owner of the Wizards, acknowledges that acceptance of the project has been lukewarm by some in the community.

Jason Freier/Wizards Owner: " What we've seen in a lot of other markets where there are downtown baseball stadiums, is exactly the same sort of thing, where there is an awful lot of skepticism and resistance to begin with. I don't think people believe us that parking is not going to be a problem, or traffic is not going to be a problem, until we have a season under our belt and have proved it."

Freier says Wizards tickets for 2009, the first season in the new park, go on sale Friday morning at ten at the Wizards offices out at Memorial Stadium.

Freier's confidence that the entire project will be a success is based on a track record of developments like Harrison Square.

A number of cities with minor league teams have rolled out a mixed-use development of this sort before, and many of them have been smashing hits.

Time will tell if Harrison Square hits a home run too.