The last years: Uniroyal Plastics and the closing of 1997

1985 – 1997

The sell-down: In 1985 the plant was transferred within the corporate family to the subsidiary Uniroyal Plastics, and the marker's account of the last years is a sell-down: Uniroyal Plastics progressively sold off the plant's other product lines, and employment fell as the lines went. The parent's own course ran through the same years — Uniroyal and B. F. Goodrich combined their tire businesses as Uniroyal Goodrich in 1986, and Michelin followed in the parent line the archives abstract traces — while the Mishawaka works, no longer a tire plant in any case, narrowed to its remaining rubber lines: the fuel cells, extrusions, adhesives, and coated fabrics of the defense-decades entry. The fifty-eight buildings of the full works deteriorated around the shrinking operation, in the marker's word.

The bankruptcy year, printed in conflict: The record reached gives the end's legal frame two ways, and both are printed. The library's local-history summary states: "Uniroyal closed after filing bankruptcy on April 1, 1997." The South Bend Regional Chamber's 2017 account of the redevelopment states that Mishawaka began planning for the ground "shortly after Uniroyal filed bankruptcy in 1991," and that the site was acquired in late 1997. The corporate family held several Uniroyal entities by then, and the carriers do not name which entity's filing each date belongs to; what the federal record settles is the sequence on the ground — a bankruptcy trustee in place for the city to lease from by 1998–99, and federal settlement agreements signed in January and December 1999, both carried in the next entry. The dates 1991 and 1 April 1997 stand as their carriers give them; the settling sources are the bankruptcy dockets themselves.

The closing: In 1997 the doors closed for good — the marker and the IU South Bend Archives agree on the year, and no carrier gives a later operating date. The Mishawaka Rubber Company, the footwear remnant's corporate shell, "was dissolved," in the library summary's undated statement; the formal dissolution date is a named gap, with the state corporate records as its settling source. The works that had begun as a wooden woolen mill about 1838 ended 159 years later as a plastics subsidiary's sold-down plant on forty-three acres of emptying buildings in the middle of the city that had grown up around it.

Sources:

1. Ball-Band Factory marker — the transfer's aftermath under Uniroyal Plastics, the progressive sale of product lines, the falling employment, the deterioration of the fifty-eight buildings, and the closing of the doors in 1997.
2. Summary history of the plant (mesothelioma.com) — the 1985 transfer to the subsidiary Uniroyal Plastics.
3. Mishawaka-Penn Public Library summary — "Uniroyal closed after filing bankruptcy on April 1, 1997," and the Mishawaka Rubber Company dissolved.
4. South Bend Regional Chamber, 2017 — redevelopment planning "shortly after Uniroyal filed bankruptcy in 1991" and the site acquired in late 1997.
5. IU South Bend Archives — the parent line through Uniroyal Goodrich to Michelin, and the plant's closing in 1997.