The remains, and the industry that survives

1997–NOVEMBER 2026

The landscape was unbuilt piece by piece, and the pieces have second lives of every kind: The Ball Band ground came first: the city took the forty-three acres out of bankruptcy, razed the fifty-eight buildings between 1999 and 2001, and holds the ground today as riverfront park, with a monument, a gazebo, and a giant painted sneaker where the red ball was made. The Dodge ground's second life is slower and, as this section is written, active: the former Dodge Manufacturing and RMG Foundry facility at 500 South Union Street stands in November 2026 as a remediation site under the Indiana Brownfields Program — a $500,000 federal subgrant approved for asbestos cleanup, public comment running 29 May to 30 June 2026, the State Historic Preservation Office finding of 2 December 2025 that no listed or eligible resources stood within the remediation area — with the company's own 1999 state marker at its gate, co-sponsored by Dodge itself while the foundry still worked under its successor's name. The brewery ground at 100 Center, redeveloped in the 1970s as the 100 Center and mostly vacant by 2019, was announced on 19 December 2024 for a $41.5 million redevelopment on a $5.64 million READI grant — 104 residential units in Wagner's brewery ground, a hundred and seventy years on — announced, and printed as announced; the Wheelabrator works' eighty-three acres stand otherwise, their fate after the equipment business left not established in the record reached, the county property records and the Tribune archive named in the Businesses section as the settling sources. The power system's remains are the exception that generates: Twin Branch's hydro plant, commissioned 1903, still runs; its name went up the hill in 2016 to I&M's 2.6-megawatt Twin Branch Solar Power Plant, online 18 August 2016 just east of the city, north of the AM General factory; and the hydro fleet's next licenses were an open public question in November 2026. What survives as industry, verified at this writing, is this. The Mishawaka Manufacturing Campus — 96 acres on McKinley Highway, with its test track — builds two vehicles: the HMMWV in Plant 1, in production on the ground since 1984, its documented rhythm including a planned one-week interruption in the week of 28 September 2026 in the company's own memorandum; and the JLTV A2 in Plant 2, in its contested ramp. The campus's union membership stood at about 400 in September 2025, the company hiring through the fall of 2026 for both lines. The former Commercial Assembly Plant stands in GEM's ownership since June 2025, its present use undocumented. Around the campus survives the stratum the directories always carried beneath the famous names: Daman Products, founded in 1976 by a Mishawaka native and grown to over 200 employees making hydraulic valve manifolds, stands in the South Bend Regional Chamber's manufacturing directory as Mishawaka's — one of the mid-size makers, with the plastics molders and precision shops of the Edison Lakes and Grape Road corridors, that the present record lists where the 1889 directory listed felting works and organ makers. And the name the town made first among its industries is a world brand again in a new owner's hands: Dodge Industrial, RBC Bearings' power-transmission division, headquartered at Simpsonville, South Carolina, its $2.9 billion sale concluded 2 November 2021 — the Mishawaka inventor's company still selling every factory on earth the means of moving power, from somewhere else. The system's ledger at November 2026 thus reads: one defense campus building two vehicles; a scatter of mid-size manufacturers; three historic grounds in three states of second life; a river still generating at the second of its dams; and a population at its recorded maximum, 51,063, with the Bureau's estimate a step above it. The industrial revolution at Mishawaka began with a promoter choosing the ground where ore, timber and falling water met. Its latest chapter is being written by remediators, redevelopers and a truck plant — on the same ground, and in part on the same fall of water.

Sources:

1. City of Mishawaka, public notice (published 29 May 2026) — the approved $500,000 Brownfields subgrant for asbestos remediation at the former Dodge Manufacturing / former RMG Foundry facility, 500 South Union Street (IDEM Site #4060054); the comment period of 29 May – 30 June 2026; the SHPO finding of 2 December 2025 and EPA concurrence of 4 December 2025; as the Businesses section carries it.
2. Indiana Brownfields Bulletin (Indiana Finance Authority), 1999–2000, and the Ball-Band Factory marker — the Ball Band ground's acquisition, razing and present park use, as the Ball Band section carries them.
3. Chamber of Commerce redevelopment profile and City of Mishawaka announcements, as carried in the Businesses section — the 100 Center's state and the $5.64 million READI grant toward the $41.5 million redevelopment announced 19 December 2024.
4. Indiana Michigan Power — the Twin Branch Solar Power Plant online 18 August 2016 at 2.6 megawatts; the hydro account of 26 March 2024; and the November 2026 license-renewal input process, as the Businesses section carries them.
5. AM General internal memoranda of 23 and 24 September 2026, as posted by UAW Local 5; UAW press release, 26 September 2025; company job postings of October–November 2026 — the campus's documented present state, as the AM General section carries it.
6. South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce, MFG Days Business Directory, read November 2026 — Daman Products Company LLC of Mishawaka, founded 1976, over 200 employees, a Helios Technologies company.
7. ABB release of 26 July 2021 and the sale's conclusion of 2 November 2021, as carried in the Businesses section — Dodge's passage to RBC Bearings at $2.9 billion; Dodge Industrial — the Simpsonville, South Carolina headquarters the company gives today.