South Bend, Indiana · 21st century
2000s
55 dated events in 2000s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
21st century 55 dated mentions
2000s
- 2000Households and income, in dated snapshots
The population divided into households, and what the households earned — three snapshots, each dated, none of them interchangeable: At the 2000 census the city's 107,789 people formed 42,908 households and 25,959 families; the median household income, measured on 1999 earnings, was $32,439, and per capita income $17,121.
- 2000The other side of the ledger: the bust, at its true size
The Associated Press, closing out 2001 on the Webmergers count, put the toll at at least 537 internet companies shut down or in bankruptcy court that year, on top of 225 in 2000, with 98,522 dot-com layoffs announced through November 2001 on the Challenger, Gray & Christmas count.
- 2000The numbers: enplanements, peaks, and the 2025 record
The federal passenger series tells the airport's modern story in one column: Boardings (enplanements) at South Bend, from the Federal Aviation Administration's passenger boarding data, ran 432,439 in 2000 — the high-water mark of the hub era…
- 2000The newest South Benders
The most recent arrivals are documented in outline, and the outline is what is printed: the census and survey series in the population file put the city's foreign-born share at 8.5 percent in the 2020–24 American Community Survey, against 6.4 percent in 2000…
- 2000The Civil Rights Heritage Center — a museum in the building it documents
The center: The Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center was formed in 2000 "to preserve the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and the history of racial struggles and extraordinary achievements of local citizens," in its archives' words.
- 2000Indiana Landmarks in South Bend: the office that lives in its rescues
In 2000 the organization saved the Remedy Building of 1896 from demolition by moving it to new ground and settling its regional office there.
- 2000HealthWorks!: a museum about the child's own body
Kids' Museum opened in February 2000 inside the Memorial Leighton HealthPlex in downtown South Bend: 12,000 square feet built by Memorial Health System to teach children in grades pre-K through 8 how their own bodies work and what healthy choices do inside them, sponsored by the Memorial Health Foundation with the…
- 2000–2026The accounting · the Reparatory Justice Commission and the present record
The Civil Rights Heritage Center , formed at IU South Bend in 2000 , built the African American Landmark Tour, took the oral histories quoted throughout this section, saved the Natatorium and opened in it in 2010, and holds the papers — the Allens', the Streets family's, Hering House's — on which the modern scholarship stands.
- 2001What the hub era left, and the 2018 map
The hub era ended each of them in turn: TWA was absorbed into American in 2001 and the St. Louis service did not survive the decade's hub closures; US Airways' South Bend service ended before the American merger era closed, and American Eagle's earlier Chicago service ended as well…
- 2002Downtown South Bend Inc.: the downtown's own corporation, and its foundation
The structure: Downtown South Bend, Inc. — DTSB — states its own founding plainly: "Incorporated in January 2002, Downtown South Bend, Inc. (DTSB) is a not-for-profit 501C(6) organization dedicated to the continued growth and prosperity of Downtown South Bend in partnership with the City of South Bend."
- 2002The note-passer of 2002 · a series the police linked, a disposition not found
The series: in 2002 the South Bend Tribune reported a run of robberies at South Bend banks that the city's police were working as one man's series.
- 2002Jaden Ivey: The Fifth Pick
Jaden Edward Dhananjay Ivey was born February 13, 2002, in South Bend, the son of Niele Ivey — Notre Dame's women's basketball coach, herself a Fighting Irish champion and a WNBA player — and he was schooled at Marian High School in Mishawaka for three years and at La Lumiere in La Porte, the boundaries printed as they stand.
- 2002Javon Small: The Register's Newest Basketball Name
Javon Unique Small was born December 19, 2002, in South Bend, and played at James Whitcomb Riley High School before a senior year at Compass Prep in Arizona.
- 2002The River Bend Film Festival (2002–2016 here) — the festival the city founded and lost
It was founded in 2002 in South Bend by a group of filmmakers and film enthusiasts, with its roots on the campus of Indiana University South Bend, where it began as the IU-South Bend Independent Video & Filmmakers Festival.
- 2002Municipal excellence and the tree designation, at their true size
The National League of Cities gave South Bend its Gold Award for Municipal Excellence in 2002 and again in 2010, both in Mayor Luecke's tenure, as the city's record carries them.
- 2003Joan Kroc, twice: a 50 million dollar bequest to Notre Dame, and the Kroc Center on the west side
The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies was established in 1986 with the first of several gifts from her; when she died in October 2003, her bequest of 50 million dollars to the university was its largest gift ever to that date, and the university's announcement put her total giving to Notre Dame at 69.1 million dollars.
- 2003The present calendar, verified to November 2026
Art Beat: The modern downtown's largest annual gathering is an arts festival: Art Beat, founded in 2003 as the project of a Leadership South Bend/Mishawaka class and produced by Downtown South Bend, fills the downtown streets each August with visual, performing, and culinary artists drawn from Michiana.
- 2003Blake Wesley: Riley High School to the First Round
Blake Carrington Wesley was born March 16, 2003, in South Bend, and played at James Whitcomb Riley High School, four miles from the campus he would join — the first South Bend public-school basketball player to sign with Notre Dame since 1985.
- 2003–todayPlan Z and the Rebuilt Ladder
The reorganization: In the 2003–04 school year, under Superintendent Joan Raymond, the corporation rebuilt its ladder and called the plan Plan Z. The elementary schools became Primary Centers, teaching kindergarten through fourth grade; the middle layer became Intermediate Centers, teaching fifth through eighth grade…
- 2003–todayArt Beat: the festival as an institution
The founding and the scale: Downtown South Bend Inc. founded Art Beat in 2003, and its own description of the event — the region's largest and longest-running single-day arts festival, and downtown's largest annual event — has held across two decades of listings…
- 2004The Metronet: the region builds its own fiber
St. Joe Valley Metronet, Inc. was incorporated in 2004, with Project Future's Patrick McMahon, Notre Dame's Gordon Wishon and South Bend businessman Karl King as its first board; a companion company, SJVM, Inc., was formed to serve business subscribers, while the nonprofit served government and education.
- 2004EmNet: the sewer software the city beta-tested
The cleanest homegrown exit in this record began as a city contract: EmNet — shorthand for "embedded networks" — was launched in 2004 as a collaborative partnership between the City of South Bend and the University of Notre Dame, initially funded by the State of Indiana, to solve the problem the Rivers section of this…
- 2004The TeenScreen case: screening, consent, and the courts
The system's one modern court fight was over a questionnaire: TeenScreen, a Columbia University adolescent mental-health screening program, came to St. Joseph County schools in 2004 as a suicide-prevention measure, instituted after a student at Penn High School took his own life; Madison Center…
- 2004The Pulitzer record: a finalist born here, an empty line for the paper
Susan Choi, born in South Bend in 1969 and raised here and in Houston, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her second novel, American Woman (2003), her reimagining of the Patty Hearst kidnapping's fugitive aftermath.
- 2004The Bridges jackpot
The largest documented win by city residents: In the record reached, the biggest lottery prize ever won by South Bend residents is the Hoosier Lotto jackpot of Wednesday, April 7, 2004.
- 2004–2020The Olympians of This Ground
Mark Hazinski played table tennis at Athens 2004; his entry stands above. No other athlete born or formed in South Bend surfaced in the Olympic registers this history reached, and the entry prints at that size rather than reaching for more.
- 2004–2026The fallen: eight names at Seitz Park, and the department's memorial roll
The Seitz Park memorial: In 2004 the South Bend Fire Department unveiled its memorial at Seitz Park, on the river below the Jefferson Boulevard bridge, honoring the firefighters of the department who died in the line of duty.
- 2004–todayThe turbomachinery laboratory — Notre Dame Power & Propulsion
From a campus room to Ignition Park: The Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory began on campus in 2004 with about ten people.
- 2004–todayThe Metronet — the city's own fiber
Built by the institutions, from 2004: The study that started it came from Project Future, the region's economic-development body, and its finding was that the South Bend area was starved of bandwidth — expensive, thin, and owned elsewhere.
- 2005The modern ledger: what the federal count says
The count kept now, in dollars: Since 2005 the International Trade Administration's Metropolitan Export Series has counted goods exports for every American metropolitan area by the Census Bureau's origin-of-movement method — goods credited to the metro from which their export journey begins.
- 2005The Studebaker National Museum today
The building: In October 2005 the wandering ended.
- 2005The Rhodes Scholarship: Pete Buttigieg, who came home
The honor: The Rhodes Scholarship — the oldest international scholarship in the world, tenable at the University of Oxford — went in the American election for 2005 to a South Bend native who had just graduated from Harvard: Pete Buttigieg, born in this city on 19 January 1982 to two Notre Dame professors, raised here…
- 2005Heartland and Club Fever: the warehouse on South Michigan
Before it was Fever it was Heartland, a country-music dance hall — its opening year was not reached by this section — and when Club Fever replaced it in 2005 the Heartland sign was never taken down, a leftover Notre Dame Magazine 's farewell account remarks on.
- 2005South Michigan Street: the adult bars and the city's buyout
In 2005 the paper reported the city's planners hoping to redevelop the former Dudes 'N Darlins site on South Michigan Street: the building had been demolished by the Urban Enterprise Association, the city funded the demolition, and the site was for sale.
- 2005–2006The reform era: the branch the 2005 fight used as its measure
The reform era's second wave — the Daniels administration's business rebuild of the Bureau — drew blood in this county, and the South Bend branch's part in the fight is the part of the branch that was never threatened: in 2005, under Commissioner Joel Silverman, the Bureau moved to close branches statewide in rounds.
- 2005–todayThe Parish Grade Schools as They Stand, and the Closing Wave
The documented closing of the modern wave is St. Mary of the Assumption's: the German parish's school, opened in the sacristy in 1884, closed in June 2005 with seventy-three students in kindergarten through eighth grade, the cost of maintaining the building and the low enrollment given as the reasons…
- 2006Corporal Scott Severns · the off-duty officer who stepped in front
On the night of Friday, 21 April 2006, off duty, he was walking a companion to her car near 1433 Northside Boulevard, by the Indiana University South Bend campus, when two men attempted to rob them.
- 2006The national medals: one Humanities Medal, three empty lines
The honor that stands: The National Humanities Medal for 2006 went to Mark Noll, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, one of the nation's foremost historians of American religion.
- 2006–2013The distinction · the manhole murders, 2006–07
The building the men called "the Fort" was an abandoned chemical plant at 604 South Scott Street, beside the Norfolk Southern tracks near Coveleski Stadium, and in the winter of 2006 it was home, of a kind, to a shifting company of homeless men who slept in its rooms and hunted scrap metal in the tunnels under the…
- 2006–2013The Manhole Murders · four men of the Fort, 2006–2007
In December 2006 four homeless men were living, in a loose arrangement of rooms, in an abandoned building at 604 South Scott Street — a former chemical plant the men of the camp called “the Fort.”
- 2007Robotic surgery: the area's first da Vinci program, 2007
The robot comes to Memorial: The hospitals' clearest adoption first is stated in the system's own formulation, and it is printed as the system's: Beacon Health System's locations record says the system "pioneered the area's first da Vinci Surgery program, which began at Memorial Hospital in 2007"…
- 2007Corporal Nick Polizzotto · the Wooden Indian Motel, and no trial at all
In the early hours of 24 April 2007, Corporal Nick Samuel Polizzotto, a nine-year veteran, answered a report of shots fired near a nightclub in the 1700 block of Lincoln Way East, with Patrolman Michael Norby.
- 2007Erskine Commons: the landfill that became a power center
Property records date the center's buildings to 2007, with tenants moving in from that September.
- 2007The swingers file itself: a searched negative, and the state's one club case
City of Indianapolis (Indiana Court of Appeals, April 17, 2007), the court reversed a summary judgment against the club's operators: whether Reel One was genuinely a private club — members only, under a written membership agreement, closed to the general public…
- 2007–2008The Riverside Trail
On 19 July 2007, Mayor Stephen J. Luecke led walkers, runners, skaters, and bicyclists through a ribbon to open the trail's first 1.75 miles, from Angela Boulevard north to Oakwood Boulevard.
- 2007–2026Two standing files updated — the Lerma indictment of March 2026; the Zentz file where the release leaves it
Delia Lerma: The Unsolved file carries her whole: she left her home at 713 South Bendix Street at about 2 p.m. on December 4, 2007, to buy ingredients at Rosales Food Store, 2812 West Western Avenue, and was found four days later in the family's van along South Carlisle Street, stabbed…
- 2008Ironhand Vineyard: the county's first documented vines
The vineyard: Dr. David Sabato, an ear, nose and throat physician who retired in 2023, planted the Ironhand vineyard in 2008 on Brick Road between Lilac Road and Portage Avenue, on the city's northwest side — about four acres in 66 rows, in the South Bend Tribune's June 2026 feature.
- 2008–2010The collapse of 2008–09 · South Bend's face of the Great Recession
It rose to 10,470 in 2008, to 17,318 in 2009, and to 17,785 in 2010 — more than double the pre-collapse count, on the series' own figures.
- 2008–2013The cold-case playing cards — the viewing route corrected; the unread suits stand unread
What stands: The unread suits stand unread: the second edition's Clubs and Diamonds, the third edition's Hearts, Spades and Diamonds, and the first edition of 2008 entire.
- 2008–todayThe two parks — Innovation Park and Ignition Park
Innovation Park, at the campus edge: Innovation Park at Notre Dame broke ground on 26 September 2008 and held its grand opening on 23 October 2009: a $13 million, 55,000-square-foot, three-story first building at 1400 East Angela Boulevard, on twelve acres directly south of the campus, approved in 2008 as the state's…
- 2009Lead and the ground at Beck's Lake: the environmental-health record
Preliminary sampling in 2009 found elevated levels of metals below the surface. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed Beck's Lake on the Superfund National Priorities List in December 2013.
- 2009The departure: St. Joseph's leaves South Bend, 2008–2009
In 2008, on the system's own timeline, Saint Joseph's consolidated: its Mishawaka campus merged inpatient services with South Bend in preparation for the move to a new hospital, and in December 2009 the move was made…
- 2009The osprey: the county's densest nesting ground
The record: The osprey's South Bend record opens in the Tribune's 2009 outdoors pages, in a headline that pairs this entry with the next one — "Falcons AND ospreys, OH MY": three pairs of ospreys nesting at Potato Creek State Park that year, a pair along the St. Joseph River behind Saint Mary's College in South Bend…
- 2009–2012The leaving: Atlanta chosen, and the last afternoon
On Tuesday, September 22, 2009, the National Football Foundation notified the city that it was terminating its agreement when the current lease ended, on December 31, 2010.
- 2009–todayMiller's Vets: a judge's second service
He met with the center's executive director, Steve Camilleri, and out of that meeting, in early 2009, Miller's Vets was born.