The remaking

1984 — 2015

The recovery, when it came, was built out of the ruins and the river: Its symbolic first act was the East Race Waterway of 1984 — the old mill race dug out and reborn as a downtown whitewater course, billed as the first artificial one in North America. Its institutional acts accumulated: Century Center had risen on the riverfront in 1977 where the Oliver power plant had stood; in 1979 the old Union Station was bought for reuse as a data center, the seed of the technology district now called the Renaissance District; and in 1986 the city built a downtown ballpark, bringing a minor-league team in 1988 as the South Bend White Sox — the Silver Hawks from 1994, and the South Bend Cubs from 2015 — to the stadium now called Four Winds Field, on ground a short walk from where the wagons were built. In October 2005 the Studebaker National Museum opened its purpose-built 55,000-square-foot home at 201 Chapin Street — the city's minutes fix the opening at October 30 — beside The History Museum, the campus of the Northern Indiana Historical Society, founded in 1867 and the second-oldest historical society in Indiana, whose holdings include the Oliver mansion and the Blue Sox's league. A city that had lost its industry was, deliberately, keeping its memory in buildings.

The harder work was economic and residential. In 2009 the university completed Innovation Park, its technology-commercialization district, across from the campus — the growth engine building its own bridge into the city's economy. On 140 acres of the old Studebaker ground south of downtown, the city laid out Ignition Park, a technology park whose first tenant, the data company Data Realty, moved in during the fall of 2012. In February 2013 the city launched its Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative — "1,000 homes in 1,000 days" — against a counted inventory of 1,347 vacant or abandoned houses, the physical residue of thirty years of shrinkage; the same year, the Smart Streets program began converting downtown's one-way streets back to two-way. Under Mayor Pete Buttigieg (2012–2020) the turnaround drew national description as such in the press, and in 2015 — the city's sesquicentennial year, marked by the first lighting of the River Lights on the river downtown — the population grew by 286 people, its largest one-year growth in more than twenty years. The growth was small and the superlatives were the press's; the direction, after fifty years, had changed.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend — the East Race Waterway (1984) and its first-in-North-America billing; the October 2005 opening of the Studebaker National Museum at 201 Chapin Street (council minutes, October 30, 2005); Ignition Park's 140 acres and Data Realty's arrival in the fall of 2012; the February 2013 Vacant and Abandoned Properties Initiative and the 1,347 counted vacant or abandoned homes; the Smart Streets conversions from 2013; the 2015 growth of 286 and the sesquicentennial River Lights.
2. City technology and team references — Union Station's 1979 purchase for data-center reuse and the Renaissance District; the ballpark built in 1986, the team from 1988 as the White Sox, the Silver Hawks from 1994 and the South Bend Cubs from 2015, at Four Winds Field.
3. The History Museum and city museum references — the Northern Indiana Historical Society's founding in 1867 as the second-oldest historical society in Indiana.