Indiana Landmarks in South Bend: the office that lives in its rescues

2000 — 2017, and the office today

The statewide corporation's northern desk: The largest private preservation corporation working in South Bend is not South Bend's: it is Indiana Landmarks, founded in 1960 in Indianapolis as the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana and renamed in 2010, whose corporate record the Nonprofits account carries. Its Northern Regional Office's South Bend history is written in its own headquarters. In 2000 the organization saved the Remedy Building of 1896 from demolition by moving it to new ground and settling its regional office there. In May 2017 the office moved again — this time restoring the Kizer House of 1885, in the 800 block of West Washington, and putting the $350,000 proceeds of the Remedy Building's sale into the Kizer's masonry and roof; the Remedy passed to a private buyer under a preservation covenant written on its deed. The organization's own release called the sequence "the serial restoration it has engaged in for more than 30 years in South Bend" — preservation practiced as an office strategy, each headquarters a rescued building handed on protected.

The office in the fights: The office's director is the region's public preservation voice in the designation and demolition fights, as the Nonprofits account records of its director Todd Zeiger; the heritage record shows the office inside the city's largest single-building case as well. When the Studebaker Administration Building passed onto the endangered lists and into its long stabilization course — told in the present-regime entry below — the May 2007 rehabilitation announcement was made with the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana as a party to the agreement and Zeiger, then its northern regional director, as a named contact. The office's own endangered list is a statewide instrument: the Administration Building stood on Historic Landmarks' "10 Most Endangered" in 2006, after the school corporation vacated it — a listing the city's own commission would later parallel with an endangered list of its own.

Sources:

1. Nonprofits account in this record — Indiana Landmarks' founding (1960), renaming (2010), scale, and the Northern Regional Office's South Bend course.
2. Indiana Landmarks, release of 31 May 2017 — the Kizer House restoration as the office's new home; the Remedy Building (1896) saved in 2000 by relocation and sold with a preservation covenant, its $350,000 price reinvested; "more than 30 years in South Bend"; Office Director Todd Zeiger.
3. City of South Bend, Office of the Mayor news release, 18 May 2007 — the Administration Building rehabilitation agreement among the Redevelopment Commission, the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, the school corporation and the developer; the building's 2006 placement on Historic Landmarks' "10 Most Endangered List" after the schools vacated it; Todd Zeiger as the Foundation's northern regional director.