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1975–1990s; proposal of 12 August 1977 · South Bend (boundary); Osceola tested negative
The floor pattern, at boundary size. South Bend unmade its downtown twice over. First the built version: about 1975 five blocks of Michigan Street were closed to traffic as the River Bend Plaza pedestrian mall, with U.S. 31 moved one block east; the mall failed, was torn out in the early 1990s, and Michigan Street was restored to traffic. Then the paper version: on 12 August 1977 the South Bend Redevelopment Commission met in special session on the R-66 urban renewal Area C programme — the programme that included "the hole," the cleared downtown ground — and heard a Century Center Mall proposal from developer Al Candler (the North Village Mall developer): some forty tenant letters of intent and a project of about $3 million, on the primary record of the commission's minutes. The mall stayed on paper; the minutes are its whole life. For Osceola the test is printed as run: no urban-renewal scheme, no cleared hole, and no mall-on-paper appears for the town in council, planning, or newspaper records reached, and none is claimed — the village street of the banked baseline was never unmade, because no one proposed to unmake it.
Sources: City of South Bend Redevelopment Commission minutes, 12 August 1977 (DocView primary record); Jim Grey's South Bend history record and Center for History photographs for River Bend Plaza.