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Mayor Henry: Joint Solution To Co-Location Died Thursday

By Jeff Neumeyer
June 18, 2010 Updated Nov 19, 2009 at 6:25 PM EST FORT WAYNE, IN (Indiana's NewsCenter) --- Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry said Thursday afternoon that the pursuit of co-location between city and county government is now dead. The development leaves Allen County Government leaders scrambling to fill what will soon be a large amount of unoccupied space in the City-County Building. A vote Thursday morning by Allen County Council caused co-location to collapse like a house of cards. The county fiscal body voted 7 to 0, affirming it would be willing to allocate no more than three-million dollars towards any co-location effort involving city government. A roughly 25-million dollar price tag came with plans for the city and county to share space in the Renaissance Square Building and City-County Building. The mayor had counted on a county contribution of at least nine million. County officials said no thank you. Paul Moss/(R) Allen County Council: " We basically put a cap on that three million dollars, which is dramatically different than the 25-million dollars that we're talking about spending from a city and county perspective." Mayor Tom Henry/(D) Fort Wayne: " Today, the exploration of a city-county co-location approach ends. But, when one door closes, another one opens." The door referred to by Mayor Henry involves 200 East Berry Street, which is the Renaissance property. The mayor figures renovations at Renaissance will be complete in about one year, making way for city police and other city offices to move into the new city hall at that time. Sheriff Ken Fries says he expects the sheriff's headquarters will now be situated in the emptied out City-County Building, that it would be fiscally irresponsible to build a new headquarters under this new set of circumstances.
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