If you recommended The Charlie Horse to a friend visiting downtown in 2022, that recommendation doesn't work anymore. The space has changed hands at least twice since. If you told someone to bring cash for the farmers market at Electric Works and call it "Ft. Wayne's Farmers Market," you'd be sending them to a name that hasn't existed since the fall of 2025. Meanwhile, if you walked past the building next to Union Street Market in March, you'd have seen scaffolding. Walk past it now and 296 apartments are full, or close to it, and the ribbon got cut back in April.
That's the thing about Electric Works that doesn't show up in the glossy renderings: the district isn't moving at one speed. The residential side just found its footing. The retail and food side keeps resetting itself every year or two. Understanding which parts of Electric Works are stable and which parts are still being built out matters if you actually live near it, because half of what gets recommended to you by an old blog post, a friend's memory, or a search result from 2023 is already gone.
The building side just hit its stride
On April 15, developers cut the ribbon on The Elex, the $100 million second phase of Electric Works. The finished building holds 296 apartment units, including 89 designated as affordable housing and 59 reserved for residents 55 and older. Kevan Biggs, president of development partner Biggs Group, told Inside INdiana Business that assembling financing for a mixed-income project wrapped around a parking garage created real complications along the way.
The building didn't arrive all at once. The age-restricted portion opened first, with move-ins beginning in 2025, and the all-ages building with three-bedroom layouts followed into 2026. Now that both are open, the development team's stated focus has shifted from construction to leasing the remaining units and filling ground-floor commercial space, which still has a fitness and wellness center and a 10,000-square-foot early childhood learning center in the pipeline.
This is the calm part of the story. A large residential project, financed through a mix of tax credits and public-private partnership, went from framing to full occupancy push in about a year. That's the kind of execution timeline that tends to hold.
The food hall keeps starting over
Union Street Market opened in November 2022 as Northeast Indiana's first year-round indoor food hall, with plans to eventually sign around 25 vendors across an East Hall grocery concept and a West Hall bar and prepared-food concept. The original lineup included Plowshares at the Market, an agricultural co-op selling fresh produce, The Charlie Horse as the market's bar, Pasta di Guy, Pikoso Burritos, Buyamba Sandwich Company and Sweet Shoppe, Carmeli's Dough, and a handful of others added through 2022 like Kekionga Craft Company and Conjure Coffee.
By April 2026, the picture looks different. A vendor letter went out that month notifying merchants that Crane Bar and The Neon Pear, the bar and gift shop that had taken over where The Charlie Horse used to be, were both scheduled to close, along with Plowshares, which lost its federal funding and is relocating off campus. The same letter said management had been interviewing new operating groups for the market.
Here's what's actually confirmed still open as of that April notice:
| Vendor | Status |
|---|---|
| The Charlie Horse (2022 bar concept) | Gone; successor concepts also closing |
| The Neon Pear Bar & Gift Shop | Closing per April 2026 letter |
| Plowshares at the Market | Relocating after losing federal funding |
| Pasta di Guy | Open |
| Savor Burgers and More | Open (joined February 2025) |
| Buyamba Sandwich Company / Sweet Shoppe | Open |
| Conjure Coffee | Open |
| Johnny Ox Pizzeria | Open |
| ACO Sushi, Ghibli Mediterranean Cuisine, O-Cha Thai | Open, newer additions |
Nine independent merchants confirmed, against an original ambition of 25. That's not a failure exactly, food halls everywhere cycle through concepts as leases expire and ideas don't pan out, but it does mean the food hall has never actually stabilized into a fixed lineup you can count on recommending twice in a row.
Even the farmers market changed its name
The market in Dynamo Alley has its own version of this story. Ft. Wayne's Farmers Market, founded in 2012 by Leigh Rowan, moved onto the Electric Works campus for the summer 2023 season starting that May, then settled in as a year-round fixture there the following year. Ownership began transitioning to the nonprofit Electric Works Public Market Trust in October 2024. That transition didn't go smoothly. By August 2025, Rowan Donahue announced she was stepping away, writing that she'd been unable to reach an agreement with the trust's leadership for over a year.
"We are grateful for the strong foundation Leigh Rowan built and we are committed to building upon it."
That's Riley Johnson, board president of the trust, responding to the split. The market reopened under a new name, Summit City Farmers Market, with a grand reopening on September 27, 2025, and it has continued running the same weekly slot since: Saturdays 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Dynamo Alley through the summer, with a winter indoor season inside Union Street Market from November through April.
If you've been telling people to look for "Ft. Wayne's Farmers Market," you're pointing them at a name that no longer exists. The market itself didn't go anywhere. The name and the ownership did.
The park doesn't have this problem
A few blocks away, the riverfront doesn't share any of this instability, because it isn't running on a private-tenant model. Promenade Park's Dragon Boat Races just marked their 10th year, held July 31 and August 1 this year. Last summer's races, held August 1 and 2, 2025, drew around 9,500 people and 23 competing teams. RiverDrums, the summer cultural night at Promenade Park featuring performances like Fort Wayne Tänzer, the German folk dance troupe, alongside a one-woman play on Rosa Parks, ran again this June without any of the operator turnover that's been a constant at Union Street Market.
That's the contrast worth sitting with. Public parks programming, funded through the city and the Riverfront Fort Wayne nonprofit, keeps its calendar and keeps growing it year over year. Privately leased retail space inside a converted industrial campus keeps resetting its tenant roster because individual small businesses take on real financial risk to be there, and not all of them make it.
What this means if you already live here
None of this is a reason to think less of Electric Works. A 39-acre former General Electric campus with 18 historic buildings doesn't finish becoming a neighborhood in four years, it settles into one gradually, in pieces, at different speeds. The residential piece just settled. The food hall piece is still settling, and probably will be for a while longer as the trust brings in new management.
The practical takeaway if you live nearby: treat the food hall roster as a snapshot, not a fixed map. Check before you send a houseguest looking for a specific bar or stall. Know that the market in Dynamo Alley now runs under the Summit City name. And if you're weighing whether to rent or buy near the district, separate the two clocks in your head, because the building occupancy story and the storefront turnover story are telling you different things about the same few blocks.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for property values or timing near downtown Fort Wayne, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks it block by block. Lion Heart Realty Group works this market every day and can walk you through what's actually stable versus what's still finding its shape. Schedule Your Free Strategy Call whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
