Gates: the grocery store side business that outlived downtown

1928 - present

The founding: The oldest founding in this section belongs to a grocer. L. O. Gates started his first dealership in 1928 as a side business from his grocery store, and the South Bend Tribune's account fixes the place: the first Gates dealership was established in Plymouth, Indiana, in 1928. A dealership begun beside a grocery, in a county seat town south of South Bend, in the last full year before the Depression, then directed by its founder for twenty-eight years: L. O. Gates ran the operation from 1928 until his death in 1956. Third and fourth generation, the house says of itself today, and the succession record bears the phrase out. It is the longest family line in either city's leg, a year older at its founding than Fort Wayne's oldest house and still running.

Downtown: Gates has been selling vehicles in downtown South Bend since 1979, when it took over the vacant Sears building at Western Avenue and Lafayette, the corner at the south end of Automobile Row, and traded there as Gates Chevy World. The address stands in the Chevrolet record a decade earlier as well: dealer records from the late 1960s place Gates Chevrolet at 333 Western Avenue, South Bend, and its sister store at 666 W. McKinley Avenue, Mishawaka, the address written on a 1969 Yenko Camaro's paperwork. The downtown store's building is gone now, demolished after the store's departure, its corner rebuilt as apartments beside the ballpark, on ground the local record describes as where the center field entrance of Four Winds Field now stands. The trade's downtown century ends, on that corner, as housing and baseball.

The closing line: In October 2023 Gates Automotive celebrated the opening of Gates Chevrolet South Bend at 311 East Ireland Road, on the city's south side, over a grand opening weekend of 11 to 13 October. The house that began in a Plymouth grocery in 1928 now stands on Ireland Road in its fourth generation's hands, with its Toyota store at 640 West Ireland Road and its Mishawaka stores behind it: founded 1928 by L. O. Gates, run by his son, then his grandsons, selling in downtown South Bend from 1979 and on the south corridor today. One caution is recorded for the file, because this section prints filings as filings: the Better Business Bureau's current profile for the Ireland Road store dates that corporation's start to 1986 and its local start to 2020. Those are filing dates for the present store entity. The family's founding is 1928, on the house's word and the Tribune's together, and it is 1928 the record prints.

Sources:

1. Gates Automotive Group, the house's About page (the 1928 grocery store side business; family owned, third and fourth generation).
2. South Bend Tribune, 2004, indexed by the Michiana Business Review Library (the Plymouth founding of 1928; selling downtown since 1979 in the vacant Sears building; the four locations and about 250 employees of that year; Larry Gates as president).
3. Newspaper account of the Gates succession preserved in the Supercar Registry's Gates thread (L. O. Gates to 1956; Van Gates from 1956; Bill and Larry from the early 1990s; the fourth generation named; the 333 Western Avenue and 666 W. McKinley Avenue dealer records, including the 1969 Yenko paperwork).
4. Michiana Business News, 19 October 2023 (the Gates Chevrolet South Bend opening at 311 E. Ireland Road, grand opening weekend 11-13 October; founded 1928, still family owned).
5. Better Business Bureau profile, Gates Chevrolet South Bend (the 1986 and 2020 filing dates, printed here as filings only).