The Development of the 5th Avenue Corridor: Part One
Gary has many primary commercial districts. These include Downtown, Fifth Avenue, and Grant Street, including the US 20/Miller area. Though each area is fleetingly a shadow of its former self, it still provides various uses, drawing local and outside commerce.
The past thirty years have seen a move away from neighborhood shops, corner stores, and mixed-use facilities. This reduction in options is sad in any city. Small retail has little function in today’s society, and local grocery stores, though they exist, are rare.
Today, gas stations have replaced the function of neighborhood mom-and-pop stores. They are one-stop facilities shops that sell everything from hot food to electronics. These gas stations have unintentionally created mini-retail districts that function independently or as franchises. They undoubtedly bring in business, but their neighborhoods benefit little.
Of course, other factors affect the growth of our neighborhoods: closed schools, abandoned buildings, cracked streets, and an ever-increasing flood of outsiders looking for a bargain who do not care about their communities or participate in local politics. It all takes a toll, and you would have to be blind and deaf not to see the impact.
THE FIFTH AVENUE CORRIDOR SECTION ONE:
Downtown (Virginia Street to Madison Street)
Distance: less than a mile
Although each commercial district in Gary has official government statistical boundaries, I will use my definitions instead in this write-up.
The 5th Avenue east-west boundaries begin at Clark Road and end at Virginia Street, about three and a half miles away. The north-south boundaries are 4th Avenue and 6th Avenue. There’s a little wiggle room, depending on where I am at any given time. But essentially, the streets I named are the borders. The stated box of streets covers sections of Brunswick, Horace Mann, Ambridge, Westbrook, the classic historical 5th Avenue Historic District, Downtown, and Emerson. I am writing without respect for the boundaries of these neighborhoods.
I saw a study done in 2008, the Gary Comprehensive Plan. Inside of it, it details specific statistics. Though the study is now about 17 years old, it is still important to cite, though it may be slightly outdated. According to the survey, 50% of the Fifth Avenue Corridor’s commercial properties are vacant. Of the remaining buildings, 30% are open, though whether they operate as retailers is another matter.
Various initiatives along the 5th Avenue Corridor have experienced varying degrees of success. The redevelopment of the blocks closest to the US Steel Yard baseball stadium has resulted in rehabilitating the Dalton Apartments and the Hudson-Campbel Center and demolishing the unsuccessful 14-story, 135-room Sheraton Hotel and its adjacent parking garage. Yet, the positive rejuvenation of this corridor section did not reach the Genesis Center. Though it was near the revitalization area, it still suffered closure.
The Genesis Center
The last use for the Genesis Center was around 2018–2019. If there was any hope of mothballing it, that hope died when the pandemic hit. During the COVID-19 crisis, its general operating fund was negative, and whatever funds were scrounged for its upkeep were never used for that purpose; in fact, they never left the bank. No money was spent on its maintenance, not even to ensure the roof remained intact.
By 2021, the Prince mayoral administration had sold it to Akyumen for $2.5 million. The deal fell through, and the City of Gary re-obtained ownership just a year later. Though the Times stated that the Center was “a sleeping giant” in 2024, it has been purposeless.
What, then, is the function of a convention center? At its core, it serves as a venue that smaller towns construct to attract external funds that can be spent within the area, thereby increasing tax revenue. Convention centers emerged as a trend during the 1980s and reached their zenith in the mid-1990s. As cities increasingly built these centers, competition for funds intensified, leading to diminished returns over time.
Moreover, there were unconfirmed discussions about constructing a new Genesis Convention Center. Following the closure of Merrillville’s Star Plaza, this was worth considering. However, it quickly transformed into the proposed “Lake County Convention Center,” which now requires Gary to compete with neighboring towns. What prompted this change is anyone’s guess.
In the words of today’s youth, it’s a shame that the Genesis Center “caught strays.” According to WBEZ, Gary had been trying to find a vendor to purchase it or a public-private partner since at least 2017. The closure of the Star Plaza Theater in Merrillville gave hope and warm feelings that the Genesis Center would take up its slack, but that never happened.
In its time, the Genesis Center certainly paid for itself. Yet, by the eye of history, paying for itself was its purpose. There was no plan for how GC could be utilized in the future, nor was there a way to gauge how a pandemic would slice into whatever meager earnings GC was generating. The earnings weren’t nearly enough to justify the City of Gary continuing to invest its pennies.
The US Steel Yard
My coming-of-age years occurred over a decade after the Genesis Center opened. I didn’t experience the fight to get an exit off the toll road at Broadway; I only experienced the aftermath. I wasn’t living in Gary when the King administration knocked down Emerson’s swaths for his new construction project. I only experienced the aftermath.
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Ultimately, we run into a familiar foe: business retention. When the Steel Yard opened in 2003, it was a good time. Gary and the Region at large had high hopes for Mayor Scott King and his administration’s ability to rejuvenate Downtown. The US Steel Yard is still in use and consistently attracts thousands of baseball game attendees annually.
The Steel Yard fares better; its open-air design has a modern aesthetic. I hear outsiders talk about having season tickets, and they are proud to speak about how they enjoy their time in Gary — at least during these activities. At game time, one can see how the stadium is packed with folks while riding west on 4th Avenue or traveling on the South Shore Line or the I-90 Toll Road, which all pass the Steel Yard to its north.
Fans come every season to enjoy America’s pastime sport, pizza, hot dogs, concerts, parties, and Rusty the Railcat. The house has no bad seats, and the atmosphere is family-friendly. One gripe that constantly comes up is that the facility is in a bad area, and some folks feel “unsafe” entering and leaving the park — to my knowledge, there have been no incidents of robbery or violence at the park to patrons entering or leaving.
Ancillary businesses that attempted to grow and expand around the Steel Yard have had trouble staying open and attracting local clientele. There are a plethora of reasons why. Since I have not investigated these reasons thoroughly, much of what follows is my opinion.
Bennigan’s Grill & Tavern
When the Steel Yard opened, an anchor restaurant shared space: Bennigan’s Grill & Tavern, 500 E. Fifth Avenue. Bennigan’s was new to the Region, with the first opening in Hobart at the former Italiani’s Restaurant (a subsidiary of TGI Friday’s Inc.) at 1605 Southlake Mall near US. 30 and Mississippi Street. Italiani’s closed in 1997, and Bennigan’s opened in 1998. Bennigan’s was a national chain with restaurants open only in the Chicago south suburbs, so a franchise opening in Hobart (and Highland at 10343 Indianapolis Blvd) was welcomed with open arms.
In 2002, Mayor Scott King announced that a Bennigan’s would open at Steel Yard stadium, marking the Region’s third location. The stadium and restaurant were conveniently located less than a mile from the toll road and the train station. This surprise led some outsiders to express their disbelief by writing to the paper to voice complaints.
“My prediction is the restaurant will be boarded up in two years,” Steve Glusac of Schererville wrote to the Times in a letter titled ‘Promotions won’t work in Gary because the city is dead.’
“These ideas are fine and good, but not in Gary, because Gary is dead. It died a long time ago.”
Gary’s Bennigan’s opened to great fanfare in 2003.
Not long after the restaurant opened, James Renard Thomas robbed the facility at gunpoint after it shut down for the night, shooting a manager in the left arm. Yet, though incidents of violence occurred at the Bennigan’s location in Highland all the time, Gary’s incident was the one to make the front-page headlines.
Bennigan’s filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, impacting only corporate-owned locations. While the Calumet City franchise shut down, the ones in Gary, Highland, and Hobart continued to serve customers.
Gary’s location was under a different franchise from the locations in Hobart and Highland. In 2007, the owner was E&J Management Group, founded by Jerla Freeman and Earmon Hill. Southshore Baseball, LLC, sued E&J after the Bennigan’s parent company went bankrupt. The RailCats’ owner then was Pat Salvi, a prominent Chicago trial lawyer.
Yet the end came for Bennigan’s Gary in 2009 when two shootings rocked the city. The first, one-time attorney, “Jerry “Angel” Peteet, shot five people outside of the restaurant at the Diamond Center, attempting to kill Robert Taylor, a man from a motorcycle gang. Salvi admitted embarrassment in the Times due to these shootings and worked to have the Diamond Center closed. Yet, the damage was already done.
The second shooting was of little Eboni Richardson, 19 months old. During a domestic dispute and pre-arranged custodial exchange between Cordell Richardson, Eboni’s father, and his brother-in-law Jamell Campbell in the Bennigan’s parking lot, two gunshots rang out, accompanied by muzzle flashes, inside Richardson’s car. Cordell shot his daughter in the chest and himself in the head. The elder Richardson, unfortunately, survived. Bennigan’s could not survive two shootings in one month.
Although Gary’s mayor at the time, Rudy Clay, defended Bennigangs in the press, Salvi had trouble with subsequent businesses utilizing the empty Bennigan’s space. Their inexperience and lack of capital led to multiple restaurants constantly opening and closing.
E&J Management was among several businesses in Hammond-East Chicago-Gary that borrowed from the Gary-East Chicago-Hammond Empowerment Zone. This situation was mirrored by the Bennigans in Gary, whose owners defaulted on repayment loans and subsequently declared bankruptcy. Salvi recognized the inefficiencies hindering the Steel Yard and the initiative to revitalize 5th and Virginia Street. The situation is quite complicated and convoluted. When asked for his thoughts on the challenges affecting 5th Avenue’s progress, Salvi chose not to comment publicly.
Nonetheless, I can infer. The manner in which Gary’s political class addressed its misconduct was a major concern. Even though 5th & Virginia saw an unanticipated resurgence under Mayor Scott King, his successors seem to have overlooked the area — the lack of attention and care is apparent.
