Portage has been talking for decades about creating a downtown on Central Avenue. Mayor Austin Bonta wants two downtowns.
“We’re going to have a downtown for the city on Central Avenue, but the region’s downtown is going to be here,” on the city’s north side, where the city made a play for the Chicago Bears, Bonta said at the Portage Economic Development Corp.’s Breakfast With the Mayor event Friday.
That Halas Harbor pitch came together in just 11 days, Executive Director Andy Maletta said, from assembling the team to making the presentation.
The video shown at Portage’s news conference for the Bears pitch was viewable through a private link that went viral.
The video was sent with a private link so the marketing team could tell when someone accessed it. “That reached 30 million people around the country,” Bonta said.
Regardless of the Bears’ choice, ruling out Portage and Gary in favor of either Hammond or Arlington Heights, “this is one of the neatest sites in Northwest Indiana,” he said.
“We couldn’t have marketed Portage any better. We’ve proved to ourselves and others that it’s OK to dream big,” Maletta said.
Ever since that day, Maletta and city officials have received multiple calls and emails, “some of them very aggressive,” from developers interested in that land, Bonta said. “We’re excited to get proposals” on this land.
Maletta said Portage is “the city that is at the center and the heart of the region.”
“Today’s a period when vision is transformed into action,” he said. “We’re taking control of our own history and our own destiny.”
Bonta said when residents heard the Halas Harbor pitch for the Bears, he got at least 10 emails from residents saying, “That’s not in our city.”
One noted the “Welcome to Portage” sign that once stood at U.S. 20 and Crisman Road. “I had to explain to them, ‘Have you ever noticed the highway?’”
The Halas Harbor presentation was possible only because of the work over the past two years to make that 300-acre site available.
When Bonta took office in January 2024, the city owned just one-third of that site, a patchwork of properties. “It was oddly shaped, and there were small patches of properties.”
The first step toward developing that site was to get the land under one owner, which the Portage Redevelopment Commission has accomplished. The next step is to create the connection between Burns Parkway, in the Ameriplex complex, to the Portage/Ogden Dunes train station.
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“It is probably one of the most underutilized” parking lots among South Shore Line stations, but once the city builds access to it from the south, that will change, Bonta predicts.
The pitch for the Bears offered a unique opportunity. “Well, shoot, we could get that all done at once,” he said.
Now that Portage is out of the running for the Bears, the Halas Harbor moniker will likely be erased. “We’ve got to come up with a better name, quite frankly.”
Early this summer, the Redevelopment Commission plans to issue a request for proposals to develop the 300-acre site. Once the city sells that land to a developer, not only will that downtown area for the region be developed, but the RDC will also have a large pot of cash to support projects throughout the city.
“We’ve become the heart of the Calumet Region in people’s minds,” Bonta said.
“This is just the most big, potential area that’s been busting all over the place,” he said.
“People often say to me, I wish I lived in Portage. And I say to them, the good news is you can. You can live in Portage.”
New homes are being built, and the city still has land available.
“Dirt is moving in Portage, and it’s moving all over. And that’s a really good thing for our city,” Bonta said.
“For us, it starts with our downtown.” That’s the original concept for a downtown, on Central Avenue roughly between Hamstrom Road and Willowcreek Road.
In past administrations, sketches of downtown concepts were drawn and put on a shelf.
“There were a lot of parking lots” in previous plans, Bonta said. Plans often ignored small businesses that already existed. The latest plan changes that.
Addressing the Portage Mall site is a top priority. “The Portage Mall parking lot is in rough shape,” and fixing it would cost $1 million. The RDC’s latest plan has a better idea.
One thing the Portage Mall site lacks is an alley behind the mall for deliveries. Engineer Scott Falk came up with a better idea in the 1990s, Bonta said, and that’s to remove the parking lot and replace it with streets lined with parallel parking.
On the east side of the mall, the RDC owns land for more businesses to pop up.
“Every previous plan that was drawn up for the downtown was done without the input of the business owners,” Bonta said. Talking with business owners and getting buy-in for the street design “took a lot of discussion,” Bonta said.
“If you’ve got an idea for a downtown, walkable business, we’ve got the base here in the works,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s going to take much longer than 10 years,” he said. “I guess it’s really just a block by then, the first block of our downtown.”
Bonta hopes to move dirt this fall or early next spring. “There will finally be some dirt moving in the center of our city.”
It’s just part of creating the city’s new downtown. The RDC is also planning to relocate youth baseball fields in the new downtown, clearing the way for future development.
“Building a downtown also creates muscle memory,” Bonta said. “People are expecting to come to your downtown to have a great time.”
That includes festivals at Founders Square and private events like Rock Fest that draw 4,000 people to the city.
“We’ve got so many people excited about coming to our currently open downtown space for that,” Bonta said. “You’ve got to demonstrate to them that this is a space people are coming to.”
To draw restaurants or shops in a place without existing buildings, “you’ve got to know that physically it’s a space that people are coming to and coming to often,” he said.
Christopher and Jennifer Zarozny are already sold on Portage’s downtown. In mid-June, they’re opening a second location for Beyond Borders Café, Christopher announced.
The 2,000-square-foot café will join the original location in Flossmoor, Illinois.
“With all the traffic and all this attention that this area is getting, it’s going to be a no-brainer, really,” Christopher said.
“That’s the proof right there,” Bonta said.
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Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.