City Hall: the house the utility built, the schoolhouse, the insurance building

1904 – 2022

The problem and the device, 1902–1904: The new city of 1899 needed a city hall and regular police and fire departments and could not pay for them: a state law prohibited the bonding of city property for such improvements. De Kever's account of the solution is the founding story of Mishawaka's municipal plant: "Mayor Mix, Martin Beiger, and other civic leaders formed the Mishawaka Public Utilities Company to assume the city's debt and issue bonds for the necessary enhancements. The municipal water and electric plants would be owned by the utility and leased to the city." The agreement produced all three needs at once — the regular departments, whose foundings are anchored below, and a city hall.

The hall at First and Church, 1904: The new City Hall rose at the northeast corner of First and Church Streets and opened in October 1904. It was the government's seat for the whole era this section's early mayors governed from: the 1917 election's polling places put the Second Ward's ballots in the "city hall basement, Church and First sts.," and the 1921 directory seats the police department in City Hall at 204 East First Street, the Board of Public Safety meeting in the building, with the fire department's Central Station a block north at 112 North Church. The Story of Mishawaka section carries the 1904 complex's eventual afterlife — the old hall retained for a new use, the utilities building demolished, the police station sold — and the city's utilities business office is documented separately, at 126 North Church Street, in the years before 2022.

The Bingham School years, mid-1980s–2022: The seat of government did not stay at First and Church until 2022, and the settlement of this point — which the Story of Mishawaka section's account and the city's own website state differently — comes from the mayor who ended it. In July 2019, proposing the Liberty Mutual purchase, Mayor Dave Wood told the South Bend Tribune that City Hall "has outgrown the space it has had since the mid-1980s, the former Bingham Elementary School tucked into a neighborhood three to four blocks east of downtown," and the paper places the 2019 commission meetings "in the current City Hall, 600 E. Third St." The city's government therefore sat, from some year in the mid-1980s until 2022, in a converted elementary school at 600 East Third Street — city departments working, in Wood's phrase, out of old classrooms. The exact year of the move from First and Church is not in the sources read; it is named in the gaps entry. The school building's own life before the city took it belongs to the Schools record.

The Liberty Mutual building, 2019–2022: Liberty Mutual had built its 93,556-square-foot steel-framed building in 1985, at the northwest corner of Lincolnway and Main, on land the city had spent money to clear. In February 2019 the insurer announced it would leave and sell. Wood signed a letter of understanding to buy the building that July, and on 5 August 2019 the Common Council voted 9–0 to approve the purchase — $2.35 million, paid with tax-increment financing dollars — with final approval following at the Redevelopment Commission on 19 August. The council debate is part of the record: Gregg Hixenbaugh had prepared an amendment to market the big building to a private buyer while the city designed its conversion, and held it off when Wood committed to marketing the building from the city's taking possession, expected in March 2020, until construction bids. The city renovated through 2021–22 and moved in phases in the fall of 2022: the Mishawaka Utilities business office came over from 126 North Church on 1 September 2022, entering at 107 North Main Street, and by 10 November 2022 the mayor could announce that the city was "fully in our new City Hall building" — City Hall, the utilities business office and the police department consolidated from three buildings into one, at 100 Lincolnway West, where the council sits today.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — the bonding prohibition; Mix, Beiger and the Public Utilities Company; the plants owned by the utility and leased to the city; City Hall at First and Church opened October 1904.
2. South Bend Tribune, 5 July 2019, as syndicated (InsuranceNewsNet) — the Liberty Mutual sale, the letter of understanding, City Hall at 600 E. Third St., and Wood's "since the mid-1980s" account of the Bingham School seat.
3. South Bend Tribune, 5 August 2019, as syndicated (Gator Sports) — the council's 9–0 purchase vote, the $2.35 million price and TIF financing, the Hixenbaugh amendment held off, the Redevelopment Commission's 19 August approval step, and possession expected in March.
4. City of Mishawaka news release, 1 September 2022 — the Utilities Business Office relocated from 126 N. Church Street to 107 North Main Street in the new City Hall; the consolidation of City Hall, the police station and the utilities office in one building.
5. Mayor Dave Wood, city message of 10 November 2022 (mishawaka.in.gov) — "we are fully in our new City Hall building and it is fully functional."
6. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory (1921) and the South Bend News-Times of 6 November 1917 — the police station in City Hall, 204 E. First; the Board of Public Safety meeting there; the 1917 polling place in the city hall basement at Church and First.