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1983 — 2021
The honors above belong to people. The National Civic League's All-America City Award belongs to the city itself, and Fort Wayne has won it four times — 1983, 1998, 2009 and 2021 — a count that puts it in the award's four-time winners' circle; the League has named ten communities a year since 1949. The 1983 award followed directly on the flood year and the Pulitzer it produced, and the city's accounts still tie the two together; the 1998 award crowned the decade of the Grand Wayne Center and the downtown rebuild; the third came in June 2009, in the season of the new ballpark; and the fourth, presented virtually on 9 June 2021, was argued on equity and resilience — Fort Wayne UNITED, the riverfront program, and Fort Wayne Community Schools' Family and Community Engagement Center were the three projects the delegation carried. Alongside the League's award stands one more awarding-body honor of the same era: an Outstanding Achievement City Livability Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1999. Magazine list-making about the city is plentiful and is not entered here; this entry keeps only what awarding bodies gave, in the years their rosters give them.
Sources:
- National Civic League, All-America City Award — the award's Hall of Fame listing of past winners: Fort Wayne, Indiana (1983, 1998, 2009, 2021).
- Accelerate Indiana Municipalities (Aim), "Fort Wayne named All-America City for the fourth time" (June 2021) — the 2021 presentation and the three projects argued.
- U.S. Conference of Mayors — the city's City Livability Award, 1999, as carried in the city's record.