The Riverfront Plans

1893–2017, and the 2045 vision

Lead: Every era of South Bend planning has drawn the same line on the map: the riverfront. The first riverfront work was the park board's — the sea wall along Howard Park recommended in July 1893 and funded by Ordinance No. 949 in June 1894, a wall to hold the filled dump against the St. Joseph. Beyer's generation added the drive: by 1906 a boulevard ran along the river from Marion Street to Michigan Street, extended north past Leeper Park, "the intention being ultimately to have a continuous driveway down to River View cemetery and the old portage." Kessler's 1911–1915 system made the riverfront the system's spine, and the Works Progress Administration's Howard Park administrative building of 1939 kept building on it. The riverwalk itself, completed in 1997 at $1.2 million by the chronology, is the Trails chapter's ground; the East Race Waterway, dug again and opened in 1984 at $4.5 million on the Civil War-era race, is the Rivers chapter's. What belongs to this chapter is the plan that joined them in the modern era.

The Riverfront Parks and Trails Conceptual Framework of 2017 was the product of a nine-month process with three community forums, and the Board of Park Commissioners' minutes of 27 June 2017 record its presentation to the board: concepts for the four riverfront parks in sequence — Seitz Park, Howard Park, Leeper Park and Pinhook Park — with adoption expected at the board's meeting of 17 July 2017. The framework became one of the informing documents of the department's 2017–2021 strategic plan, and its Howard Park concept ran ahead of the rest into the rebuilt park of 2019. The city's current plans page still lists the framework among the standing Venues Parks & Arts plans, beside the City Cemetery Master Plan of 2015 and My South Bend Parks and Trails. The newest plan in the city takes the riverfront up again at the largest scale: the Downtown 2045 Plan, adopted in February 2026 and told in the planning entry below, counts among its vision goals "creating a worldclass connected riverfront open space system" — the 1893 sea wall's intention, restated a hundred and thirty years on.

Sources:

1. Board of Park Commissioners, minutes of 27 June 2017 (City of South Bend document system): the Riverfront Parks and Trails Conceptual Framework — the nine-month process, the three forums, the concept parks (Seitz, Howard, Leeper, Pinhook), adoption expected 17 July 2017.
2. City of South Bend Venues Parks & Arts, Master Plan Update 2021–2025 (chronology: the 1939 WPA administrative building; the 1997 Riverwalk at $1.2 million; the 1984 East Race at $4.5 million).
3. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907–1908) (the Marion boulevard and the intended continuous driveway); Historic Preservation Commission staff reports (the Kessler system).
4. City of South Bend, Plans and Studies page (updated 21 July 2026: the Riverfront Parks & Trails Conceptual Framework (2017) and the City Cemetery Master Plan (2015) among the Venues Parks & Arts plans) and the Downtown 2045 Plan adoption record (the connected riverfront open space system among its vision goals).
5. Rivers and Trails legs of this record (the East Race's digging and the riverwalk's building, at their own size).