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The Packard Area is not one neighborhood but the alliance of the historic south-central neighborhoods around Packard Park — and Packard Park itself is a factory site. The park, at Fairfield and Packard Avenues, was bought by the Park Board in June 1933 for $12,000 from the Packard Piano Company, whose plant had stood there since Isaac T. Packard rebuilt his burned Chicago organ factory on Fairfield Avenue in 1871; the park opened in 1937 and its redesigned grounds were reopened on July 31, 2025. The Packard Area Planning Alliance (PAPA) formed in 2005 as part of the city's comprehensive planning. Its original plan covered 555 acres and seven neighborhoods — Creighton-Home, Fairfield, Illsley Place, Oakdale, South Wayne, West Rudisill, and Williams-Woodland Park — bounded by Creighton Avenue, Calhoun Street, Rudisill Boulevard, and Broadway, with 7,695 residents in the 2000 census. The Packard 2030 plan, adopted in 2023 as an amendment to the All in Allen Comprehensive Plan, expanded the alliance to 18 neighborhoods, from Foster Park to Kettler Park. Many of those neighborhoods have their own entries in this section.
Sources: Packard Area Planning Alliance plan, April 2005, and Packard 2030 (City of Fort Wayne, adopted 2023); City of Fort Wayne, Packard Park facility history; Packard Area Planning Alliance (papafw.com).