Just 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, Gary was once a vibrant steel town with close to 180,000 residents in the 1960s. It is now home to less than 80,000 people and battered by decades of industry layoffs and racial friction that caused waves of suburban flight, shrinking city coffers drastically.

Gary, which is 85 percent black, has since wrestled with high rates of unemployment, crime and fleeing businesses, as well as fewer resources to invest into 50 square miles of infrastructure that continues to decay. The city department that handles road repair, snow removal and other public maintenance has reduced its staff to 17 employees from 100 employees in 2006.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and former attorney general of Indiana, Ms. Freeman-Wilson is seen as taking a different approach to saving Gary, coming on the heels of her recent predecessors, whose plans for urban revival hinged primarily on blockbuster projects like building an independent league baseball stadium and hosting Miss USA beauty pageants. A proposed museum dedicated to Michael Jackson, who grew up here, has yet to become more than a pipe dream.