Lloyd M. Allen: the mayor who inherited the closing

1964 – 1972

The election of 1963: Lloyd M. Allen (1919–1989) was the city's judge when he ran for mayor in 1963, and he ran as a Republican in a Democratic-leaning city and won in a landslide — the election of 5 November 1963, carrying five of the city's six districts. He was inaugurated on 1 January 1964. Between his election and his inauguration the ground of his administration was laid: on 9 December the Tribune broke the Studebaker closing, and on 20 December the last South Bend Studebaker rolled off the line. The payroll that had stood at some 24,000 at its postwar peak stood at 7,000 at the end; all 7,000 went out together. Allen's eight years were spent governing the city that fact made.

The renewal mayor: Allen's administration was the great executor of federal-era South Bend. The urban renewal program — framed in the landmark-acts entry below — ran at full stretch in his years: the LaSalle Park project carried from plan to ground, the Chapin Street project of 1968, the one-way downtown street system, and, in the seventies' turn, the federally funded Model Cities work in the Near West Side out of which the Near West Side Neighborhood Organization grew. His council dedicated the new County-City Building in January 1970, and in December of that year Allen himself made the move the newspapers photographed — the last mayor out of the 1902 city hall, up to the tower's top floor — and the old hall came down behind him.

The Notre Dame fight: Allen also opened the city's boldest annexation campaign. Beginning in 1969 his administration sought to annex nearly 2,000 acres to the north, including the campuses of Notre Dame, Saint Mary's and Holy Cross — the motive, as Mayor Parent later recalled it, was arithmetic: state and federal money followed population, the 1970 census was about to record the city's first decline, and the students inside the line would count. The council balked in 1969 and, after a tumultuous hearing in January 1971 at which Father Edmund P. Joyce, the university's executive vice president, warned that a favorable vote would be fought in court, voted the annexation down, 6 to 3. The universities remain outside the city to this day; the episode stands as the high-water mark of the annexation wars told below.

The last Republican: Allen was re-elected on 7 November 1967 — the last time a Republican has won a South Bend mayoral election. He chose not to seek a third term, and his parting assessment, delivered in January 1972, is the epigraph of his era: "Those who need government services the most — the poor, the elderly, those lacking job skills — will continue living in our city. Those who can afford to take care of themselves, provide the services and provide the tax base to support municipal services will continue moving out of the city. That must stop. It's the big problem we face in the next decade." The decade, and the office, went to the Democrats from there forward.

Sources:

1. The mayoral-election record — the elections of 5 November 1963 (the landslide, five of six districts, City Judge Allen) and 7 November 1967 (the last Republican victory), and Allen's decision against a third term in 1971.
2. WNDU, "60 Years Later: South Bend moves forward after Studebaker's departure" (8 December 2023) — the Tribune breaking the story 9 December 1963, the last car 20 December, 24,000 at peak and 7,000 on the payroll at the end.
3. Notre Dame Magazine, "New Horizons" — the 1969–71 annexation campaign against the universities, the January 1971 hearing, the 6–3 council vote, Father Joyce's warning, and Mayor Parent's recollection of the motive.
4. Joe Molnar, "More People: The Worst Decade in South Bend History" (West SB) — Allen's January 1972 parting assessment, quoted from his address.
5. South Bend Tribune photo archive (December 1970) — Allen leaving the old City Hall for the County-City Building; the council minutes of 12 January 1970.