The regime as it stands: November 2026

2024 — 2026

The Commission today: The Historic Preservation Commission meets on the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. in the Council Chambers of the new City Hall at 215 South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd; its page, updated 29 July 2026, lists Sarah Andrews as president and four of its nine seats vacant — the two Common Council appointments, one mayoral appointment and the architectural historian's seat among them — with meetings scheduled through 16 November and 21 December 2026. Its Standards and Guidelines stand in a fourth version, edited in November 2025. Its accounting of the regime it administers is the one this account has used: approximately 200 local landmarks, nine local historic districts, some 6,000 surveyed resources rated Outstanding, Notable or Contributing.

The endangered list of 2024: In August 2024 the Commission resolved its Top Ten Most Endangered Properties, published by the city on 27 September 2024 — the list ranges over the Commission's whole jurisdiction, city and unincorporated county together, and is printed as issued: the South Bend State Bank of 1923 at 911 South Michigan Street, a local landmark under Ordinance 9079-2000, standing alone on a quarter-block whose neighbors burned and were demolished; Grace Methodist Episcopal/St. Andrew Greek Orthodox Church (1915), 760 South Michigan; the Indiana Lumber Company/Bendix Local No. 9 building (1928), 738 South Michigan, the last structure of its complex; the Knights of Columbus hall (1924), 316 West Jefferson Boulevard; the Burke Building (1928), 1019 South Michigan, a local landmark under Ordinance 9081-2000; the Cozy/Linden Theatre (1926), 1635 Linden Avenue; a carriage house of 1900 at 519½ South St. Joseph Street, within the Taylor's Field local district; Greene Elementary School (1929), on Roosevelt Road in the county; the Twin Branch Power Plant Screening House (1925), on Jefferson Road; and the State Theater, 212–216 South Michigan Street. "The purpose of the Top Ten List is to bring awareness to properties that we are in danger of losing forever," the Commission's administrator, Ross Van Overberghe, said in the city's release; the two cases below are what the list's logic looks like when it works, and when it is still working.

The State Theatre: bought, shored, and in negotiation: The tenth name on the 2024 list has moved furthest. The theater — opened as the Blackstone in the 1919 building the Architecture account records, renamed the State under the Publix chain in 1929, closed in 1977 — passed through the foreclosure and tax-sale years the Theaters account tells, and in February 2025 the city purchased the 17,000-square-foot building for $800,000 from AMF Holdings LLC, the financing organization that had acquired it when the former owner defaulted. Late that year the city spent $350,000 shoring up its roof, downspouts and windows. In December 2025 the Redevelopment Commission issued a request for proposals; four organizations proposed — the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County (a nonprofit arts organization to renovate the theater into a multiple-screen cinema with flexible event space), Main Stage Inc., the TF Cloud Foundation, and C Kramer Interiors — and because two of the proposers were awaiting the same state grant decision, the Commission delayed its choice to July. On 13 July 2026 it was announced that the Community Foundation had received a $4 million READI 2.0 Arts and Culture grant toward its proposal, and the Redevelopment Commission agreed to begin negotiations with the Foundation, any agreement to return to the Commission at a future public meeting. As this account is written in November 2026 no final agreement stands in the record reached: the city's most-watched preservation case is open, mid-negotiation, with the building standing shored and city-owned.

The Administration Building: stabilized, not yet saved: The Studebaker Administration Building of 1909 — designated a local landmark in 1992, under Ordinance 8267-1992 — has run the regime's whole course in one building. The school corporation vacated it in the fall of 2006, and it stood that year on the Historic Landmarks Foundation's statewide 10 Most Endangered list. In May 2007 a $14 million rehabilitation by a Utah developer was announced with the Foundation, the city and the schools as parties; that plan did not complete, and the building passed in 2009 to a Phoenix owner and stood empty, on the Historic Preservation Commission's own 10 Most Endangered list in 2023. On 23 July 2024 the Redevelopment Commission approved a development agreement with Studebaker Admin QOZB LLC: the Commission committing no more than $825,000 toward lead and asbestos identification and abatement, paired with a private commitment of $3.3 million to stabilize the building — in the agreement's own framing, not to activate it, but to "stabilize and preserve it and ensure that it can be redeveloped in the future." In January 2025 the Common Council added a two-year vacant-building tax abatement, the developer having closed on the property, with an initial stabilization investment of about $920,000 — roof, windows, watertightness — described to the Council. The conversion itself remains unexecuted, as the Architecture account's note records: the building enters November 2026 stabilized and abated, its reuse still to come, the same posture as Tippecanoe Place across the entries above, whose restaurant closed in January 2026 after forty-six years and whose next chapter, in the Architecture account's words, is unwritten. The regime's honest present tense is that: two of the city's greatest houses and its greatest office building all standing, all kept, none of their stories finished.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Historic Preservation Commission page (updated 29 July 2026) — the meeting schedule and chamber, the current commissioners and four vacancies, the counts of landmarks, districts and surveyed resources.
2. City of South Bend, "Historic Preservation Commission Announces Their Top Ten Most Endangered List of 2024," 27 September 2024 — the August 2024 resolution, the ten properties as issued with their dates, ratings and landmark ordinances, and Administrator Ross Van Overberghe's statement of purpose.
3. South Bend Tribune — the State Theatre timeline (the February 2025 city purchase for $800,000 from AMF Holdings LLC; the $350,000 shoring of late 2025; the December 2025 request for proposals), 10 April 2026 (the four proposals and the delay to July), and 5 August 2026 (the Community Foundation's $4 million READI 2.0 award, announced 13 July 2026, and the Commission's agreement to negotiate).
4. City of South Bend, Redevelopment Commission agenda item, 23 July 2024 — the Studebaker Administration Building development agreement: up to $825,000 in abatement commitment against a $3.3 million private stabilization commitment, in the agreement's stated terms.
5. City of South Bend, Office of the Mayor news release, 18 May 2007 — the 2006 endangered listing, the 1992 landmark designation and the $14 million rehabilitation announced that year.
6. South Bend Common Council proceedings as reported, January 2025 (Resolution 25-06) — the two-year vacant-building tax abatement for 635 South Main Street and the approximately $920,000 stabilization investment.
7. Architecture account in this record — the Administration Building's 2023 endangered listing and unexecuted conversion; Tippecanoe Place's restaurant closure of January 2026 and unwritten next chapter.