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2014–2050 · MACOG AND THE INDIANA BUSINESS RESEARCH CENTER
MACOG, scored. The Michiana Area Council of Governments' long-range plan of November 2014, "Michiana on the Move: 2040 Transportation Plan," projected the four-county MACOG region — Elkhart, Kosciusko, Marshall and St. Joseph — to increase in population by 10 percent between 2010 and 2040. The 2010 census gave the region 588,899 (266,931 + 197,559 + 77,358 + 47,051); the plan's 10 percent implies roughly 647,800 by 2040, or about 3.2 percent per decade on a straight line. The 2020 census returned the region at 606,294 (272,912 + 207,047 + 80,240 + 46,095) — growth of 2.9 percent in the decade, against the plan's implied 3.2 percent: the plan's trajectory is running very slightly ahead of the censuses, by three-tenths of a point in the first decade, and the plan's own successor says so in its terms — the 2050 plan (Michiana on the Move: 2050 Transportation Plan, ch. 2) records the 2010–2020 regional growth as approximately 2.9 percent, with Elkhart +4.7 percent, Kosciusko +3.7 percent, St. Joseph +2.2 percent and Marshall −2.1 percent. The successor plan projects the region to 663,286 by 2050 on Woods and Poole data — a 9.4 percent increase over the 2020 census count; its 2019 draft, the 2045 plan, had projected the region from just over 600,000 in 2018 to about 659,000 by 2045, a nearly identical 10-percent arc. These are regional projections: MACOG has never published a Granger-CDP projection, and no subdivision-era forecast for the CDP itself was found in the open record — the 1954 Zook arithmetic carried in the banked Businesses fragment (270 homes planned) is a building count, not a population projection, and is not scored as one.
The Indiana Business Research Center, scored. The IBRC's county projections, purely demographic and based on the 2020 census count, project St. Joseph County at 272,672 in its 2020 base (an estimates vintage, not the census count) rising to 273,415 in 2025 and 274,650 in 2030, then flattening and turning down — 274,754 in 2035, 274,059 in 2040, and fewer residents in 2050 than in 2020, with the county's modest gains through 2035 followed by slight decline (STATS Indiana / Hoosiers by the Numbers county profile, source: IBRC). Scored against the census: the IBRC's 2020 base of 272,672 sits 240 below the census count of 272,912 — a miss of 0.09 percent, in the direction of under-counting — and the IBRC's flat-to-declining county arc stands in direct conflict with MACOG's Woods-and-Poole growth arc for the region; both print, and the 2030 census will score them. Named gap — the school record: no Penn-Harris-Madison demographic or enrolment study with a Granger projection was found in the open record; the settling source is the district's demographic/enrolment studies and the Tribune archive's coverage of them, and the forecast record as scored here is therefore the regional and county record only.
Sources: MACOG, "Michiana on the Move: 2040 Transportation Plan" (Nov. 2014), chs. 2–4; MACOG, "Michiana on the Move: 2050 Transportation Plan," ch. 2 (Figure 2-3: estimated regional population growth to 2050; Woods and Poole); Build Indiana Council / Elkhart Truth summary of the draft 2045 plan (Sept. 26, 2019); STATS Indiana / Hoosiers by the Numbers, St. Joseph County profile (IBRC population projections, 2020–2040); U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 and 2020 decennial counts.