The downtown return: Courtyard 2010, Hampton 2019, the Bradley 2021

2010 — 2021

Rooms come back to the center: The Hilton stood alone downtown for twenty-five years. The return began with Harrison Square, the development built around Parkview Field (opened 2009): at the corner of West Jefferson and South Harrison, White Lodging opened the Courtyard by Marriott in 2010 — 250 rooms, six floors, built to serve the Grand Wayne Center and Embassy Theatre trade, and joined to the Embassy by a skywalk over Harrison Street erected in 2010. On July 18, 2019, the same developer opened the Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Fort Wayne Downtown next door at 226 West Jefferson — 136 rooms, more than a quarter of them suites, half the rooms facing Parkview Field — with a walk-up Burger Bar and Conner's Rooftop, billed at opening as the city's only open-air rooftop bar.

Then the boutique. The Bradley opened on July 15, 2021, at 204 West Main Street in the Landing — 124 rooms, nine of them suites named for Indiana cities, a rotating art gallery off the lobby, and two restaurants including a rooftop bar. It was created by Provenance, the Portland-based boutique operator, in partnership with Barbara Bradley Baekgaard, the Fort Wayne co-founder of Vera Bradley, who co-designed it; the press of the opening called it the city's first boutique hotel. Its address closes a circle this section opened with: the Landing is the same Columbia Street ground where the town's first taverns were licensed in 1824 and where the Randall stood — the city's newest hotel planted in its oldest lodging district.

Sources:

1. City of Fort Wayne / White Lodging releases via Around Fort Wayne, June 7, 2018, and January 28, 2019 — the Hampton Inn & Suites groundbreaking and topping-off: 136 rooms, 226 W. Jefferson Blvd., the Courtyard "opened in 2010," and the rooftop bar overlooking Parkview Field.
2. Harrison Square (reference summary) — the 250-room Courtyard at Jefferson and Harrison and the 2010 skywalk to the Embassy; Elmhurst High School class page (2020 reunion materials) — the Hampton Inn "opened July 18, 2019"; Hotel News Resource, July 22, 2019 — the Hampton's opening and Conner's Rooftop as the city's only open-air rooftop bar.
3. Visit Fort Wayne / Provenance release, July 8, 2021, and CoStar, June 2021 — The Bradley: opening July 15, 2021, 124 rooms, nine suites, 204 W. Main St., Provenance and Barbara Bradley Baekgaard; Indianapolis Monthly, July 16, 2021 — "the city's first boutique property."