AH Challenge: Make Fort Wayne, Indiana, Larger City

My old hometown, Fort Wayne, is the second largest city in Indiana. Its population is around 250,000 (and MSA about 400,000), second only to Indianapolis' 1 million urban population.

What could have made Fort Wayne a significantly larger city?

Would the downtown expressway (proposed in the 1950s, but killed off) have helped it grow? Interstate 69 passes by Fort Wayne, and the city is ringed by I-469. Would there be more interstate highway access into/around Fort Wayne if the city was enlarged?

What would the downtown look like now? (In recent years, downtown has been revitalizing, with more residential, retail, and other developments going on, triggered by the new minor-league baseball stadium.)

In a significantly larger Fort Wayne, would its airport have enlarged, and in turn, been able to provide more air service? As it stands now, Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA)--I know, a joke of a name--is quite small, with only 8 gates in an architecturally uninspiring terminal (4 upstairs with jetties, 4 downstairs on the ramp). It is now served a few flights a day by the regional affiliates of American, Delta, and United (all using Barbie jets), and the holidaymaker airline Allegiant Air, so flight options are few and thus not very flexible compared with even Indianapolis. Would a larger FWA be possible?

What about business, industry, etc?

And would housing prices be higher than they are now? Fort Wayne is listed as one of the cheapest places to live.

Is there anything that could enlarge Fort Wayne (either in the past, or in the future)?
 
I really like alternative local history - and although my knowledge of Indiana is solely based on Wikipedia, I'll have a go.
Most obvious thing I can think of is for Indiana University to have its original campus at Fort Wayne, instead of Bloomington.

That would probably lead to extra growth - and no doubt plenty of butterflies. One possible butterfly might be that Bill Gates' great-grandfather , born in Pennsylavnia in 1860, sees opportunities in Fort Wayne and moves there instead of Bremerton, Washington . As a result Bill Gates grows up there , launches a company called Peony (named after the state flower) and the Silicon Canyon happens...

House prices will be a lot higher.
 
Have some local business leaders circa 1955 or maybe 1965 anticipate the communications boom of the future and lay the ground work for Ft Wayne as a high tech design center. The local college is turned into a top tier advanced electrical engineering school. Local government policy is restructured to support new cutting edge business vs existing manufactoring. In the 1970s the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs types gravitate there to draw from the ferment of electronics whiz kids, advanced research, supportive government policy. As rust belt industries fade in the 1970s & 80s the Silicon Prairie new wave cherry picks the best talent from the retrenching manufactoring businesses & some of the electronics manufactoring remains in the region, vs all of it going to Taiwan.

In the 1980s & 90s its popular for Microsoft executives to deer hunt in the autum & Apple sponsors NASCAR.
 
One of the most peculiar business things I have ever seen is that Warsaw, Indiana is home to three of the biggest orthopedic companies (hip and knee replacements) in the world - Depuy, Zimmer, and Biomet (Zimmer and Biomet have merged and Depuy was bought by Johnson and Johnson). With only 13,000 in Warsaw, this is rather bizarre to say the least and I dont know how they ended up there. However, other than perhaps early personal ties, it seems reasonable that they could have started in Ft. Wayne. Now consider that perhaps these companies, rather than being acquired, become larger health care companies themselves ala Abbot Labs or Johnson and Johnson. Now you have two or three major health care companies headquartered there and perhaps an ecosystem of smaller supporting health care companies in the region. Having a notable university there would go a long way also. But this seems to be a somewhat plausible outcome.

The hard part about Ft. Wayne is that Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin have 100's of cities that have the same claim to success at Ft. Wayne. Implicitly, what does Ft. Wayne have that these dont? It's easier to imagine Fort Wayne switching with Green Bay (pop 100,000 + surrounding region) than switching with a major city like Indy. Just my 2 cents.
 
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