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THE FIVE-YEAR CYCLE TO THE PRESENT · THE PLAN SEQUENCE AS THE RECORD KEEPS IT
The cycle itself is public record: Indiana park and recreation boards hold their Land and Water Conservation Fund eligibility through a current five-year park and recreation master plan, approved by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Community Grants and Trails section; under the state's published guidance a draft plan falls due November 15 and the final plan April 15 of the grant year, and an approved plan keeps a community eligible for five years. Mishawaka's parks department plans inside that cycle — the city's own Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for fiscal 2004 states that the Parks and Recreation Department "relies heavily on the Park Five Year Master Plan to guide, direct and implement projects and improvements." A five-year park master plan was therefore written, current and operative in Mishawaka by 2004.
The system the plan governed, at the size the city's own book gives it: the same FY2004 report counts the department providing and maintaining 31 parks and gardens and over nine hundred acres of open space, with a full-time staff of 36 under a six-member board. That count does not agree with the counts printed elsewhere in the build's record — 28 public parks in the department's 2022 Activity Guide and in South Bend's 2021–2025 master-plan update's description of its neighbor, "over 25" on the city's current parks page, with 29 and 26 also in print — and the conflict stands whole in the founding fragment; it is not resolved here.
The plan at the level of the single park: beneath the system plan, individual parks carry master plans of their own, and that practice is current. A South Bend Tribune report of August 2026 has the city working with V3, described as Mishawaka's park design consultant, on modifying the Normain Heights Park master plan to take in the demolished former Fire Station No. 2 property at 2332 N. Main Street. Design-firm project records likewise carry master-plan implementation at Battell Park and a phase-one master plan at Crawford Park.
The gap, printed as a gap:The city's financial reports attest the plan's existence and use; they do not print its editions. The settling sources are named: the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Community Grants and Trails plan files, which hold each approved plan and its approval date, and the Mishawaka park board's minutes, against the South Bend Tribune's morgue for the postwar bond issues. Until those are read, the sequence stands open at exactly that link, and no edition dates are invented here.
Pointer: the Kessler half of this item stands whole in the founding fragment as a tested negative — the 1995 National Register nomination for the Battell Park neighborhood (NRIS 95001541) never names Kessler, the designer of record there is McClunnie (1879–1882), and Kessler's documented county work is South Bend's 1911–1915 system, boundary-printed there. It is not re-run here.
Sources:
- City of Mishawaka, Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, fiscal year 2004 (Parks and Recreation Department description; park count, acreage, staffing, board, and the Park Five Year Master Plan statement), mishawaka.in.gov.
- Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Community Grants and Trails / LWCF guidance (five-year master plan requirement; draft due November 15, final due April 15), in.gov; and the 2026 Stellar Communities FAQ (IDNR section), in.gov/ocra.
- South Bend Tribune, report of August 1, 2026 (Normain Heights Park master plan modification; V3 as the city's park design consultant).
- City of South Bend, Venues Parks & Arts 2021–2025 Master Plan Update (description of the Mishawaka department) — boundary source, South Bend's document.
- The River & Parks, founding fragment (park-count conflict printed whole; Kessler tested negative).