Ancora Partners LLC has won Indiana Landmarks’ 2025 Cook Cup for Outstanding Restoration for its $286 million revitalization of Fort Wayne’s former General Electric plant as a mixed-use downtown campus.
“This place had been an important part of the community for a long time, and we felt a responsibility beyond just saving the buildings to do so in a way that would have a broad community impact and be a new economic engine for Fort Wayne,” says Jeff Kinsgbury, co-founder of Ancora.
Phase 1 of Electric Works prioritized rehabilitating the 12-acre campus west of Broadway, which retained eight historic buildings constructed between 1907 to 1942. The original factory, largely designed by Philadelphia architecture firm Harris & Richards, featured buildings constructed of reinforced concrete with brick facades, large windows, and open floors supported by massive columns to create open light-filled workspaces for manufacturing.
The 700,000 square-foot complex demanded an outsized proposal and a constellation of financing to make redevelopment possible, resulting in a public-private partnership including Ancora Partners, local investors, the State of Indiana, Allen County, and the City of Fort Wayne.
Phase 1 invested $286 million, drawing on local, state, and federal sources for financing, as well as private equity and debt to restore and redevelop the site. The project utilized $35.7 million in federal Historic Tax Credits and $12.5 million in New Markets Tax Credit allocation. National Trust Community Investment Corporation made its largest historic tax credit investment in the company’s history at Electric Works.
Led by general contractor Weigand Construction, workers updated mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and retrofitted buildings with energy-efficient windows that replicate the originals, while preserving the foundations, concrete and steel structures, exterior walls, and other character-defining features.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management worked with developers to evaluate the property and create a remediation plan. Nearly 20,000 tons of material was removed to prepare for the renovation, with over 79% being reused, reclaimed, or recycled. Adding to the challenge, the project battled supply chain and workforce challenges amid the global COVID pandemic, yet sourced around 90 percent of the labor and materials from northeast Indiana, a significant economic impact.
Based on feedback from neighborhood, city, and regional plans, the development team curated tenants to fill needs in the neighborhood and broader city, including a primary and urgent care clinic and pharmacy, a public market and food hall, a public STEAM high school, businesses, and co-working space.
Development of the West Campus kicked off in February 2020 with the announcement that Do it Best Corporation would make Electric Works its headquarters.
Since Phase 1’s opening in 2023, Electric Works has brought 1,000 jobs to the former industrial site, and annually draws hundreds of thousands of visitors who patronize its businesses, shop and eat in the food hall, and attend classes, programs, and performances.
“The extraordinary rehabilitation at Electric Works has not only revived one of the city’s most important industrial landmarks, it has also sparked revitalization in the surrounding neighborhood, where local property owners are making renewed investments in their homes and businesses,” says Brad Ward, president of Indiana Landmarks. “It’s exactly the kind of community impact we seek to honor with the Cook Cup.”
Each year, Indiana Landmarks awards the Cook Cup to the property owner who follows the highest standards of restoration in transforming a significant historic property, with positive impact on the neighborhood or community. Indiana Landmarks created the Cook Cup for Outstanding Restoration in 2007, when the inaugural prize went to the award’s namesake family in honor of its transformation of the West Baden and French Lick Springs hotels in southern Indiana. The Cook family is nationally recognized for their many restorations of significant landmarks throughout Indiana.
