INSIDE THIS ISSUE Classifieds..............................................................................A4 Community Calendar ..............................................B9, 10, 11 Dining & Entertainment ..................................................... B5 Discover Huntertown ........................................................ A14 Harvest Times .......................................................................A8 Healthy Times ...............................................................A10, 11
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September 27, 2013
Huntertown shops plan block party Work to begin soon on 40-acre project at Dupont, Diebold
By Garth Snow gsnow@kpcmedia.com
Lima-Plank Mercantile Mall shops are combining for a Saturday, Oct. 19, block party to benefit Huntertown Park. Minnie Webb, who owns Classic Cuts Salon, said the event will include food, a silent auction and other festivities. Stores will begin special activities at noon, dinner will be available at 4 p.m., and entertainment will begin at 6 p.m. The mall, also known as Huntertown Mall, is at the intersection of Lima Road and Indiana 3. “I’ve had a salon here for 21 years in October and we were going to have a re-grand opening,” Webb said. “And then we decided to involve all the merchants and make this into a block party.” “We just got done remodeling, and it just kind of snowballed from there,” Webb said after a merchants meeting. Dan Holmes, who leads the nonprofit organization developing the park, said
By KPC Media staff
PHOTO BY GARTH SNOW
Bob O’Neal, (from left), Dan O’Neal and Skip Hedges level the first concrete poured for the Huntertown Park. The base layers for the amphitheatre were poured Sept. 19. A Huntertown merchants group will hold a fundraiser for the park Oct. 19.
his group welcomes the help. “I think it’s a great deal,” Holmes said. “Minnie’s a shaker and mover. She’ll make it work. She has a lot of ideas.” Scott Ruse owns Pepperchini’s restaurant and bar,
next door to Webb’s salon. He said Webb has been one of his business neighbors for 16 years. The planning has elevated the enthusiasm within the shopping center, Ruse said. The fundraiser will help to showcase the center’s attraction as a
Kenya again beckons agent of local church Jen Foster of Fort Wayne recently returned to Africa as an international advocate for Kenya Simba Scholars and Creative Women of the World. Foster will be in Kenya for about five or six months. It is her third trip, she said, but not her last. Foster works with the Mwangatu Women, which said she translates as “light of hope.” She is not teaching the women to make jewelry or to crochet. “These women have the skills already,” she said. “But what we’re teaching them is how to turn all these skills into something that’s going to empower you to make your own money and to build yourself up financially so you don’t have to rely on other people
around you to give you money. “Because that dis-empowers you. When you give somebody money without accountability, that dis-empowers somebody.” Foster spent the summer networking from Saint Joseph United Methodist
she said. “I was working as an audio engineer in Virginia. I was feeling like I wanted to do something different with my life but I wasn’t sure what. So one day I woke up and I bought a plane ticket to Kenya, and it was just one of those things that had a pull on my heart, so I
“And I’ve come out of a rut that I was in because I was at a place where I just didn’t feel like I was doing a whole lot for society, I didn’t know what my purpose was.” Jen Foster, of Fort Wayne, international advocate serving in Kenya Church, 6004 Reed Road. “This is my home church,” she said. “I started going here when I was 13 years old. I left Fort Wayne for work. But this has always been my home base.” “In 2008 I was at a point in my life where I wanted something more,”
ended up volunteering in an orphanage for about a month in 2008.” Back in Fort Wayne, Saint Joseph pastor the Rev. Russ Abel and Simba Scholars founder Saneta Maiko told Foster about an See KENYA, Page A4
Times Community Publications
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3306 Independence Drive, Fort Wayne, IN 46808
By Garth Snow
low-traffic area close to town, he said. “It’s just kind of a neat little area to visit,” Ruse said of the plaza on the town’s south business zone. Pepperchini’s will serve a meal from 4-6 p.m. For See SHOPS, Page A14
Developers are expected to begin work on a shopping plaza on the southeast corner of Diebold and Dupont roads by early October. Don Steininger said the first phase of the work on Dupont Corner will not involve buildings. “We will start demolition of the trees Steininger in the next two weeks,” Steininger said Sept. 19, just days after the plans were approved by the Allen County Commissioners. The project first received the review of the Plan Commission. Steininger filed the paperwork in late June. During the fall phase
of work, crews will place utilities, retention ponds, streetlighting and landscaping. Steininger continues to work to attract an anchor store. “By next spring or early summer we’ll see where the interest is and whether they want to build on their own or they want us to build it for them,” he said. “Once we start it’s going to take shape in a hurry, because we’re going to put a lot of equipment there,” he said. Steininger said plans call for the main entrance on Diebold, but he still hopes for approval for a major entrance on Dupont. Steininger’s other local projects include Chapel Ridge, off Maysville Road. “This will not be that big, because it’s not that big a piece of ground,” he said. Chapel Ridge is 72 acres, See PROJECT, Page A5