After years of emptiness and silence, it's still easy to imagine the activity in the massive buildings where thousands of workers once assembled electric motors. Some of the structures on Fort Wayne's GE campus are more than a century old. But they were built to last, and beneath the inevitable rust and peeling paint, the insides seem in much better shape than might have been imagined in the years GE was slowly but firmly shutting down the campus southwest of downtown.

Conjuring GE's glory years here is easy. But it's also possible to envision the glowing future developers have sketched for the multiuse complex to be known as Electric Works. On a frigid recent afternoon when two of our editorial board members toured the western side of the vacant complex, the campus seemed as lonely as the moon, and it was even colder inside the buildings than outside. But it was surprisingly easy to imagine those sturdy, vast rooms being transformed into shops, condos, offices and entrepreneurial spaces. The long, low building that stretches toward the southwest seems made for the ambitious indoor/outdoor farmers' market developers envision. On a summer day, students from Indiana Tech – the center's first committed tenant – or other institutions could be strolling between these buildings along with families looking for food or entertainment and workers taking a break.

Such a vision has transformed the old American Tobacco Company campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the concept is succeeding elsewhere. Josh Parker of Cross Street Partners, one of three companies developing the site, has already invested an impressive amount of money and time in the proposition that Electric Works, developed through a public-private partnership, is the city's most logical next step forward.

“This is not a unique concept,” Parker said during a visit with the editorial board last week. “It's not something we haven't seen done all over the country.

“Fort Wayne's laid all the right groundwork through its individual investors and through the things that the city has done, like Parkview Field,” said Parker, whose company is based in Baltimore.

“This GE campus, the scale is so massive, the public sector couldn't take this on, the private sector couldn't take it on by themselves. ... This is an opportunity to ... build on all the success downtown.”

Moving forward will require the community to commit to one of the most costly projects in its history. Plans for the first phase, which would transform the buildings west of Broadway, will cost $214 million. Thirty-one percent – $65 million – will have to come from local sources. Those could include the Allen County Capital Improvement Board, which has already advanced $2 million; the county itself, which has already pledged $1 million; tax-increment financing; local foundations; and the Legacy Fund.

Other pieces of the 60 percent public-40 percent private funding puzzle are coming together. State and federal tax credits will cover almost 30 percent of the project. Developers estimate they've put $8.5 million into the project so far and express confidence they can raise the additional private funding. But to take full advantage of state and federal tax credits, keep the momentum going with private investors, and deal with other projects on their agendas, the developers say they need a commitment from the community for its part.

“We're kind of down to brass tacks on this,” Parker said. Remediation is scheduled for this spring and construction needs to start in the summer. “If we're going to hit the deadlines for the state and federal credits, we've got to be locked down” by the end of March, he said.

The developers estimate taxes generated by Stage 1 of Electric Works will pay back the local investment in 13 years. But even if that seems overly optimistic, anyone with a sense of Fort Wayne's recent history knows the significance of Electric Works can't be measured solely by the taxes and traditional jobs it would generate.

If Electric Works becomes a reality, underserved neighborhoods to the south could be transformed. The development would reinforce and expand the perimeters of the live-work-play downtown taking shape to the north. The plan to emphasize educational/entrepreneurial collaboration could help change the arc of the city's economic development as we fight to retain and attract workers with 21st-century skills.

A 39-acre reminder of Fort Wayne's past glories could become a symbol of everything we want for this city in the future.