COMMENTARY: Effort would enhance Terre Haute with eye-catching, practical touches

On the program, the home renovator duo Chip and Joanna Gaines knock out walls and redecorate living rooms, turning unattractive houses into gems. They don't bulldoze the whole structure and start over. Instead, they spend $30,000 to make over a $200,000 house. They take what's there and make it better.

That's the basic premise of Turn to the River, organized by Wabash Valley Art Spaces and a team of dedicated local people.

Its stated goal may sound abstract at first: "A project to reconnect Terre Haute's downtown with the Wabash River through public art and design."

So, what does that entail, in "Fixer Upper" terms? The currently disjointed, two-thirds-of-a-mile path from the corner of Wabash Avenue and Third Street to the riverfront will become more coherent and appealing. It will look as if people are meant to walk from the avenue named "Wabash" to the river named "Wabash." The existing, long-neglected elements along the way will be enhanced. The existing local treasures — the Vigo County Courthouse, the banks of the Wabash and Fairbanks Park — will become easier to find, visit and enjoy.

What's there will be made better.

Take the present route from Wabash to the riverfront, for starters. A paved path is in place now, though it involves a risky crossing of busy Third Street, as well as First Street; and transitions from a sidewalk to the courthouse and City Hall government campus parking lot to a quiet street, a grassy lot, and finally the amputated old Wabash River Bridge — replaced 24 years ago by the twin Dreiser and Dresser bridges — hovering above the river.

That same now-disconnected corridor would become the Wabash Walk, a distinct pedestrian promenade, lined with decorative paving materials. Trees, art pieces, seating and way-finding signs would join the landscape and guide people toward the riverside. The government campus would lose some of its isolated dreariness as a place residents only go in tough circumstances — a court case, a jail visit, paying fines and traffic tickets.

Courthouse squares are hubs of many cities. Here, the Vigo County Courthouse, an architectural beauty full of artwork and monuments, sits alone in an urban island, surrounded by a traffic moat of four roadways. Turn to the River can't erase that problem, but could make the government campus a historic, scenic stop on a new, safer passage way to and from the Wabash River.

Or take that forgotten Wabash River Bridge abutment. Today, the bridge remnant is overgrown with scrub trees, sitting high above the river on the west edge of an empty, one-acre, city-owned lot. The abutment itself "is in great shape," said Pat Martin, the city's chief planner and a driving force for Turn to the River. The project would convert the chopped-off bridge into a picturesque river overlook and the lot into a "celebration" greenspace city park, ideal for weddings, picnics, small concerts and family reunions.

That spot, known as One Wabash, also would link downtown Terre Haute to the river, the Heritage Trail, the new Indiana State University riverside facilities, City Hall and the courthouse and Fairbanks Park.

Turn to the River makes sense and would likely involve a modest cost, as 21st-century, quality-of-life civic projects go. One troublesome hindrance — a pedestrian crossing of Third Street from the west end of Wabash Avenue safe enough for families and older folks — would carry a higher pricetag, but also needs etched into the to-do list.

Turn to the River also would dissipate a glaring neglectfulness. The thousands of people passing through Terre Haute daily on Third Street (U.S. 41) see no visual hint that, just a few hundred feet to the west, flows the fabled Wabash River, immortalized in Paul Dresser's "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away." The project would make the river an accessible destination and its location unmistakable.

Fundraising for the final architectural designs is underway, Art Spaces executive director Mary Kramer said during a well-attended open house for the project Thursday at the Hilton Garden Inn. Kramer hopes those designs can be completed by September. Once the designs are finished, major funding will be sought for the construction phase of the project, which began with a request by former Mayor Kevin Burke in 2007 for Art Spaces to design a sculpture in place of the aging fountain on the government campus. A National Endowment for the Arts grant paid for the initial planning, and gradual progress followed.

The final construction phase could be completed "pretty fast," said Kramer, whose energy and vision through the past decade has unleashed the city's bottled-up cultural heritage. Thursday's open house, which included gathering more ideas from the public, was intended to show the project continues on a "forward-moving pace," said Kramer, because, "I don't want it to be forgotten."

It should indeed keep going.

Once done, Turn to the River would entice visitors and residents walk through the downtown and riverfront areas, link fitness with sight-seeing and leisure activities, attract new employers and potential workers and lift iconic assets — the river, Wabash Avenue and the courthouse — to a prominence. The project would take Terre Haute and make it better.