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2005 – 2026
Beutter Park: The ground's present state was verified for this fragment in November 2026, and it is a park. Robert C. Beutter Riverfront Park was established on the site in 2005, on the IU South Bend Archives' account — about seven acres named for Mayor Robert C. Beutter, who held the office from 1984 to 2003 and so presided over both the closing and the acquisition. The park holds the river race, an eight-hundred-foot perennial garden, the "River Shards" sculpture, and the Ironworks Ice Rink in the city's parks material, and at its edge the Ball Band Biergarten keeps the factory's name on the riverfront it stood on — visitor accounts of all of it are current in 2026.
The Mill: Just south of the park, the factory ground's second life is residential. The Mill at Ironworks Plaza — a $45 million development by Flaherty & Collins, with 232 apartments, commercial space, and a parking garage on two city blocks of the old works — broke ground on 28 September 2017, on the South Bend Regional Chamber's account, and stood complete in the South Bend Tribune's December 2023 account of the plaza. The two blocks are the plant's own footprint: downtown Mishawaka's largest single piece of ground passed from one employer to housing in twenty years.
The memorial and the marker: The works' memory is kept at 111 W. Mishawaka Avenue, where the Ball Band Memorial — a small park with a gazebo and a monument dedicated, in its inscription's sense, to all the Ball Band workers of Mishawaka — overlooks the site, and where the multi-panel Ball-Band Factory marker stands: the source of several statements carried in this fragment, recorded in the Historical Marker Database (m64088), photographed 2 April 2013, its page last revised 4 May 2026. At the riverfront a giant painted high-top sneaker, bearing the red ball and a historic scene of the factory, stands as the site's popular monument — visitor photographs of September 2026 show it in place. No building of the plant survives on the ground; the marker's 2013 site photographs show open parkland where the fifty-eight buildings stood.
The traces elsewhere: What survives of the works survives dispersed. The plant's own films — seventeen of them, from the Foreman's Club picnics to the Polaris work — are held by the IU South Bend Archives as the Mishawaka Woolen and Rubber Company Film Collection, with the company's records beside them. Its shoes stand in The Henry Ford's collection. Its founder's house stands at 317 Lincolnway East, carried in the entry below. And its mark — the red ball, registered in 1901 — is in current commerce on the revived sneakers, a trademark outliving its factory by a generation and counting. The Tribune's 2000 valediction, written while the buildings still stood, remains the city's own summary, and it is exact: "Natives know Uniroyal was the old Ball-Band. Lawyers know Uniroyal was the object of a landmark sex discrimination case. Collectors prize Red Ball Jet boots."
Sources:
- IU South Bend Archives — Robert C. Beutter Riverfront Park established on the site in 2005; the Mishawaka Woolen and Rubber Company Film Collection (seventeen films) and the company's records held there.
- City of Mishawaka parks material and visitor accounts current in 2026 — Beutter Park's seven acres, the river race, the 800-foot perennial garden, the "River Shards" sculpture, the Ironworks Ice Rink, and the Ball Band Biergarten.
- South Bend Regional Chamber (2017) and South Bend Tribune (December 2023) — The Mill at Ironworks Plaza, $45 million, 232 apartments, groundbreaking 28 September 2017.
- Historical Marker Database, m64088 (Ball-Band Factory marker) — the memorial at 111 W. Mishawaka Avenue, the gazebo and workers' monument, the marker photographed 2 April 2013 and its page revised 4 May 2026; visitor photographs, September 2026 — the giant painted high-top sneaker at the riverfront.
- South Bend Tribune, "Voice of the People," 2000 — the valediction quoted above.