Why is downtown Gary, IN abandoned and desolate?

They are waiting for the Rock concerts to arrive, improve the Parks, green roofs and beautify the cities. Larry Pellows of Lallapalooza stated that this was thier future mission when he appeared on the George Stromboulopolis show.

Michael Moore's "Roger and Me," while controversial, is also insightful.

Couldn't get to the site, but have driven past on the way to Chicago. I'm a Clevelander, and Gary is probably the worst, but not the sole example of the decline of the Great lakes region. Cleveland, Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit, Rochester, Erie - the Rust Belt is suffering by & large. Only Chicago is big enough & diverse enough to have avoided this collapse. It's really depressing.

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Wasn't Gary a steel mill town? I always understood that it was one of those places where the only industry it ever had stole away one dark night, leaving its residents high and dry. I've always heard that Gary was a high-crime area. Here is a website with some interesting statistics. I guess the murder rate is almost nine times the national average.

Here's some photos of abandoned apartment buildings in Gary. Gary was a planned industrial city, and these apartments represented an aspiration to greatness. Very sad.

I remember driving past Gary on the freeway in the 80's and seeing all those abandoned buildings with the paint peeling off them, etc. It looked pretty desolate, even then.

Camden, New Jersey is another post-industrial ghost town whose abandonment is just downright scary.

It smells so bad that during the Gary interval, on the I94 east or west, I try holding my breath. Depending on the prevailing winds, sometimes I actually avoid the stench.

Those building are vintage and would certainly look magnificent fixed up and landsacped. I think Gary could be a Going Green model for the rest of America. After all it can only get better.

The problem with the demise of Gary, Indiana, has to do with the fact that Gary is a company town without a company! Founded by US Steel and named after the company CEO, changes in the steel industry have reduced its demand for cheap, inexperienced labor. Today, the steel mills will not even take your application unless you have two years of college and an associates degree.

People graduating from Gary schools are short on skills in reading, writing and math. Mayor Rudy Clay of Gary only has a GED and did not graduate from high school! Gary has just lost a federal grant for city bus service because they misspent over $4 million in federal funds last year.

The School Board consists of some people who rob the coffers for their own use. Board member Ledbetter recently used a city school board credit card to fly to Tokyo, Japan, to visit her boyfriend (over $5,000 was used by her and the city of Gary paid for it). State auditors claim she needs to reimburse the schools but she has yet to do so and she continues to sit on the school board.

We are coming off another scandle with the Gary Urban Enterprise Authority (GUEA) in which the executive director stole more than one million and filled the pockets of friends and family with inside land swap deals in which GUEA paid inflated prices for empty houses to their friends. Several have been indicted and are awaiting trial.

I remember in the 60s when Black Separatists wanted their own State and they were going to run things. Gary is the urban example of that misdirection. Gary has the highest percentage of African Americans (86.6 percent) of any US City over 100,000. They run the show and you cannot participate in anything unless you are African American. I had one great idea for community development and went to my city councilman and was asked, "Who do you have working with you?" meaning: "What person of color is working with you?" I got the message and dropped the project.

I attended a meeting following Rudy Clay's "election" where, as county chairman of the Democratic Part in Lake County, IN, (he was elected 24 to 23 by precinct people), where Clay got up to announce "We've taken the city back!"... meaning, away from the previous duly elected major, Scott King, who was white. So race plays the key role here.

When Richard Hatcher (a Black) was elected Major in 1966 (?), white residents saw the handwriting on the wall and moved out of the city, taking their capital, their homes, their businesses, with them. Today Gary does not have an office supply store, no retail chain store, no major grocery store for the 100,000 residents. The price we pay is to drive 15 miles to buy at other business outside of the City of Gary.

So much for the Great Black Separatist Experiment. It has failed miserably and will not improve until Black leadership (if you can call it that) realizes that no one can succeed unless we all succeed.

There are many, many fine people here who attend church, raise their families and look forward to the American dream. But until the city has a vision and city leaders (?) realize their shortcomings, nothing will change...