South Bend, Indiana · 21st century
2020s
76 dated events in 2020s, in order. Part of the full timeline.
21st century 76 dated mentions
2020s
- 2020South Bend today
The census of 2020 counted 103,453 people — up 2,285 from 2010, the second increase since the peak after the upturn of 2000 — and the Census Bureau's 2025 estimate holds the city essentially there, at 103,201.
- 2020COVID-19: the county's course and toll
The St. Joseph County Department of Health confirmed the county's first COVID-19 death on 26 March 2020: the patient, a man in his eighties with severe comorbidities, is unnamed in the department's release, and unnamed here; the county then stood at twenty-eight confirmed cases.
- 2020Three banks in four days · Nahkomie Taylor, February 2020
The robberies: Nahkomie Taylor, 31, had been on parole for armed robbery for less than a month when, on February 18, 2020, he robbed a bank at gunpoint in South Bend.
- 2020The note that threatened to kill · Shamond Jenkins, December 2020
The robbery: in December 2020, Shamond Jenkins, 20, of South Bend, went into a bank and handed over a note threatening to kill an employee if the employee did not give him cash; while the employees gathered cash from the teller drawers, he told them repeatedly that he was prepared to kill them.
- 2020The SR 933 Pathway
In September 2020 a new twelve-foot-wide pathway opened on the west side of Indiana 933 between Angela Boulevard and Douglas Road, about ten feet from the highway where it divides the University of Notre Dame from Holy Cross College and Saint Mary's College.
- 20202020, at its true size
As of March 2020 the fair stood planned on its usual dates: the Lakeville Lions Club's March 2020 newsletter, the club that has kept a food booth at the fair since 1944, carried the St. Joseph County 4-H Fair on its calendar for 3 to 11 July at the fairgrounds, with the club's fair work days set in April.
- 2020–todayJames Mueller: the chief of staff succeeds
When Buttigieg stood down, Mueller ran for the office himself, won the election of November 2019, and was sworn in on 1 January 2020 as the city's thirty-third mayor.
- 2021Perry Vine: a meadery-winery at true small size
The Perrys began as hobbyists making mead, cider and wine; their first public tasting stands dated in the Junior Achievement account — 14 May 2021, at the JA Wine & Beer Festival at Four Winds Field, where, festival-goers told them their mead was the best they had had.
- 2021Crypto: the frame, at true size
One paragraph of context, then the city: Cryptocurrency — Bitcoin first, from 2009 — spent a decade as a speculation conducted on exchanges and phones before it touched most American institutions at all, and South Bend's documented encounter with it is shorter and thinner than Fort Wayne's, where a hometown bank put…
- 2021A museum for Finn: the Children's Museum of South Bend
The planning took three years; the board acquired its space in early 2020, on South Michigan Street; and in July 2021 the Children's Museum of South Bend opened in a soft opening, reservations only in the pandemic's terms, a hands-on STEAM museum of building, water, light and pretend.
- 2022What farms remain, and what they grow
The count as it stands: The 2022 Census of Agriculture, the latest completed count, gives the county 547 farms on 153,034 acres, an average of 280 acres, with 141,832 acres of cropland, 1,262 of pastureland, 4,290 of woodland, and 24,052 irrigated acres…
- 2022The neighborhoods today: the framework of November 2026
The city's IGNITE grant program, launched in July 2022, funds neighborhood projects through the associations: the 2023 round named LaSalle Park, Miami Village, Near Northwest, the Near West Side, the Northeast Council, River Park, Rum Village, SOAR and Twyckenham Hills among its recipients…
- 2022Tess Gunty — the novelist of the city itself
The fame: Tess Gunty's debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch (2022), won the National Book Award for Fiction — the country's highest literary honor — along with the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and the Indiana Authors Award.
- 2022The one Bitcoin prosecution
According to the Justice Department, in August 2022 Roell communicated over the internet with a person he agreed to pay to facilitate his having sex with a fifteen-year-old girl; in the Department's words, "Roell used Bitcoin to pay a deposit," and then arrived at a hotel in South Bend with roses, jewelry, and cash.
- 2022–2024Double Track Northwest Indiana, and what it changed for South Bend
The biggest investment in the South Shore's history was made in Lake and Porter counties, and its South Bend effect must be stated exactly: The Double Track Northwest Indiana project built a second track between Gary and Michigan City — 16.9 miles of new double track within a twenty-six-mile segment…
- 2022–2024The Coal Line Trail
The Indiana Department of Transportation's own newsletter tells the building of it: the 0.75-mile first phase opened in September 2022, running from Lincoln Way West at Wilber Street along the old railroad bed behind Holy Cross School and the southeast edge of Muessel Grove Park to the southern end of the Riverside…
- 2023The rest of the documented roll
At the roll's small end, a $10,000 Mega Millions ticket was sold at Speedway #5487, 2075 East Ireland Road, in the drawing of August 8, 2023.
- 2023–2024The Lions Return; the Andean Bears Arrive
A new pride arrived in May 2023: Kembe, a male, and Shaba and Shtuko, sisters, all about ten years old, rescued as babies in South Africa, unable to be re-released, and together as a pride since 2013; they came on the recommendation of the Lion Species Survival Plan, with a breeding recommendation for Kembe and Shtuko.
- 2023–2026The present state: the CONNECT plan, the 2025 network, and the cuts of 2026
The plan: The modern system's one comprehensive re-examination is the CONNECT Transit Plan, completed in March 2023 by the Michiana Area Council of Governments with Transpo and the Interurban Trolley, led by the planning firm Jarrett Walker + Associates after nearly two years of research and public engagement.
- 2024"The Last Lap" — and the afterlife that followed it
The reported end: In May 2024 the speedway staged a two-day farewell, "The Last Lap," on 24–25 May, with 120 entries on the Saturday.
- 2024The Indiana Dinosaur Museum — the newest museum
Mark Tarner, who founded the South Bend Chocolate Company in 1991, spent more than twenty summers digging fossils in Montana, and in July 2024 he opened the Indiana Dinosaur Museum to hold the collection those summers made.
- 2024The Administration Building: stabilized, empty, and unconverted
In July 2024 the city's Redevelopment Commission approved a deal to put a new roof on the building and cover its window openings — stabilization, not conversion — and that is where the matter still stands.
- 2024The regime as it stands: November 2026
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…
- 2024The Link Trail
Its opening is documented at three sizes, and all three are printed: the university's sustainability office records that "The Link, which opened in late October 2024," runs from the corner of Angela Boulevard and Notre Dame Avenue…
- 2024The drone winter, 2024–25
The national episode: In November and December 2024 the sighting report changed its object: thousands of reports of large drones at night, beginning over New Jersey and spreading nationally, drew the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA and the Defense Department into a joint statement on 16 December 2024…
- 2024–2026The Community Today: Congregations and the Federation Campus Discussions
The Federation's executive director observed in October 2024 that the Orthodox community was "continuing to be ascendant as a percentage of the overall Jewish population."
- 2024–2026The $48 million renovation — and the 2026 season
The project: On September 10, 2024, the city and the club broke ground on a $48 million renovation of the city-owned stadium, designed by Populous — the largest in the park's history.
- 2024–2026Our Next Chapter
The plan: In 2024 the library opened a ten-year Facilities Master Plan for its nine branches — Our Next Chapter — designed with MKM architecture + design, taking the branches one by one.
- 2024–todayThe Amazon campus — the county's, boundary-printed
Not in this city, and part of its story: On 25 April 2024 Governor Eric Holcomb and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation announced the largest capital investment in the state's history: Amazon Web Services' $11 billion data-center campus, promising at least 1,000 jobs…
- 2025The largest of all: the Walsh family's 150 million dollars for architecture
The gift: The largest single documented gift attached to any institution in this record was announced on 25 September 2025: 150 million dollars from Matthew Walsh, a 1968 Notre Dame graduate who became co-chair of his family's Chicago construction company, Walsh Construction, and his wife Joyce, to the university's School of Architecture.
- 2025Spatial repellents: from South Bend to a WHO recommendation, 2025
The decisive trial, in Busia County, western Kenya, was a cluster-randomized controlled trial run with the Kenya Medical Research Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an area of high transmission, insecticide-resistant mosquitoes and universal bed-net coverage: published in The Lancet in…
- 2025Big Cat Tracks: The Master Plan's Final Phase
Lead: On 14 August 2025 the zoo broke ground on Big Cat Tracks, the final phase of the 2016 master plan: $5.5 million of new, naturalistic habitats for Amur leopards and Amur tigers and other Eurasian species…
- 2025A world-record attempt, in costume, at the Morris
The attempt: On 9 December 2025, the Morris Performing Arts Center — the room Ella Morris sold to the city for one dollar, two entries back in this drawer — hosted an attempt on a world record of a new kind.
- 2025The kiosks, and the ban
Coinme-powered Coinstar machines and their competitors sold Bitcoin for cash in grocery and convenience stores across Indiana — the Legislative Services Agency's fiscal note on the 2026 kiosk bill estimated 903 virtual currency kiosks operating in Indiana as of January 2025…
- 2025–2026The armory line, III · 2402 East Rose Street, and its return to service
The renovation, by general contractor F.H. Paschen, began with preconstruction in October 2025 and work from December 2025 — the five rooftop units and the heating plant first (a boiler, an 80,000-BTU furnace, two water heaters), then a 120-day interior program of classrooms re-carpeted, thirteen new windows, fresh…
- 2025–2026The count: 103,201
The latest figure: The Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates, the most recent published series as this section closes, put the City of South Bend at 103,201 people on 1 July 2025, and St. Joseph County at 272,861 on the same date.
- 2025–2026The airport's record year
The record: South Bend International Airport closed 2025 with the busiest year in its history: 1,111,002 ticketed passengers, up 23.5 percent over 2024, a fifth straight year of growth, and past the old record of 991,457 set in 1997 — the figure stands in the St. Joseph County Airport Authority's own release of February 2026.
- 2025–2026The zoo's record, and the calendar's current season
The zoo's year: The Potawatomi Zoo's latest published attendance is another record: 409,776 visitors in 2025, the highest in the zoo's history, at the end of a series that runs 316,030 in 2022, 351,628 in 2023, and 361,626 in 2024…
- 2026The open ledger: what remains unsettled, and what would settle it
In the institutions' own keeping: A third class belongs to bodies that keep their own records: the Elks' Grand Lodge institution list, which alone settles Lodge No. that closed in August 2024 is St. Louis's museum, a different institution, and its closing is not imported here…
- 2026Settlements landed after this ledger was drawn
Closed by the fix pass: the Notre Dame football ranking question of the autumn of 2026 was settled on the three pulls it named — the Associated Press polls of 2 and 9 November 2026 and the College Football Playoff release of 3 November 2026, all since read.
- 2026The seats filled: who holds South Bend's offices
This article names the rest, seat by seat, as they stand in November 2026. Every council and clerk term now running ends on 31 December 2027, and the next municipal election falls on 2 November 2027.
- 2026The route map as verified, November 2026
As of November 2026, five airlines fly from South Bend, and the map states its date: United Express flies Chicago–O'Hare — increased to seven daily roundtrips on 2 September 2025 and to eight daily from 1 October 2025 — and Washington–Dulles, where United began daily service on 3 December 2024.
- 2026The sector today: consolidation, endurance and the quiet exits
The present state: The sector this section has followed for a hundred and fifty years stands, in November 2026, in three conditions at once.
- 2026The Lafayette Building fire · 8 June 2026
The disaster roster runs to the present year: On Monday, 8 June 2026 , the historic Lafayette Building caught fire at about 8:20 a.m. — flames roaring thirty feet in the air, smoke forcing from shut windows — in a blaze residents spotted from in front of the courthouse across the street.
- 2026The Rose Street nameplate: a real name, on the wrong building
The 88th Readiness Division's facilities contract of 30 January 2026 (Military Installation Contracting Command, Fort McCoy, award W911SA26PA060) lists the South Bend facility, code IN033, at 3401 Boland Drive…
- 2026The two departments as they stand
Fire: The South Bend Fire Department of November 2026 is a career department of 256 full-time firefighters in four divisions, serving a population of approximately 103,000 — the figures of the department's own page…
- 2026The hospital map as it stands
The open points stand where the entries left them — the tower's remaining floors in the spring of 2027, the behavioral health consolidation announced for 1 December 2026 — and they belong, when they close, to this record's next update.
- 2026The Zoo Today
Its executive director is Josh Sisk, who came to the zoo as General Curator in 2015, returned to his home zoo in Los Angeles, and came back to become executive director in 2019, by his own account in the zoo's magazine…
- 2026The Studebaker National Museum in November 2026
Its state in November 2026 is its exhibition calendar, and the calendar is full: three special exhibitions stand on view together, a combination the museum's own release of November 9, 2026 names in one breath.
- 2026The art museum's lease: a thirty-six-month clock, running
The vote: On Thursday 27 August 2026 the Civic Center Board of Managers voted unanimously to end the South Bend Museum of Art's lease at Century Center on thirty-six months' notice.
- 2026The East Race, closed for its works
The contract and the money: The riverwalk improvement project between Seitz and Howard Parks was funded by the Redevelopment Commission on 26 March 2026 with $5.6 million — four million from the River East Residential TIF and $1.6 million from the River East TIF…
- 2026The State Theatre negotiation: open, at four million dollars and counting
The award: On 13 July 2026 the state's READI 2.0 program announced a four-million-dollar award for the "Historic State Theater South Bend Transformation," made to the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County; the state's project description carries the work as five screens and theaters.
- 2026The arrivals: zebra mussels in the river, carp at the gate
Zebra mussels — present, on the state's own list: The Indiana Department of Natural Resources keeps an official list of the state's zebra mussel waters, and on that list — updated 12 January 2026 — St. Joseph County's entry is the St. Joseph River.
- 2026The System as It Stands
November 2026: As this section is written, the system's building is nearly done and its growing edge has moved to the ends.
- 2026The present ecosystem, November 2026
The map: As the directories state it in November 2026, the working system is this.
- 2026The present scene
The mural summer: South Bend's living art, as of November 2026, is increasingly painted in public, on walls and underfoot.
- 2026The present map, November 2026 — and the boundary
What stands: The city's documented drinking map, as the licensing-age directories and the press state it in November 2026, is a taverns-and-pubs map, each room with its entry above: the Linebacker Lounge (1962) at the campus edge; CJ's Pub (1984) and Corby's Irish Pub (1988, under its film name from 1992) downtown…
- 2026The retail map as it stands
The map, whole: South Bend in November 2026 shops in four places, and none of them is the place it shopped in 1970.
- 2026The Present Map: November 2026
Lead: The lodging map of South Bend, as the record stands in November 2026, divides into four grounds.
- 2026The present map, at survey size: the food institutions standing in 2026
Tippecanoe Place closed on January 5, 2026, after a run the Tribune counts at 45 years and at nearly 46. LaSalle Grill closed on February 25, 2026, after thirty-five.
- 2026The ticket that was not a winner
On June 3, 2026, within hours of the game's launch, the Hoosier Lottery halted sales of a new $5 scratch-off, Space Invaders Cash Invasion , over what it described as a technical issue.
- 2026The government as it stands
His chief of staff since 1 June 2026 is Troy Warner, who concluded six years of service on the Common Council on 15 May 2026 to take the post — a succession that changed the council's roster mid-term, as the next paragraph records.
- 2026The November 2026 elections: the county offices turn over
The prosecutor: The general election of 3 November 2026 changed the two county law-enforcement offices whose holders South Bend lives under, and both results stand in the unofficial returns as reported on 8–9 November 2026.
- 2026The economy as published
The rate: The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the South Bend–Mishawaka metropolitan area's unemployment rate at 4.1 percent in September 2026, preliminary and not seasonally adjusted — the latest published month as this section closes, from the bureau's Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment release of 28 October 2026.
- 2026The universities today
Indiana University's announcement of his appointment put the campus's enrollment at approximately 4,600 students — IU South Bend is the largest regional campus of Indiana University — and the campus's sixtieth commencement, on 10 May 2026, still lists Pappas in the office.
- 2026The teams' current seasons
The Cubs' summer: The South Bend Cubs' 2026 season is complete and stands as the best in the franchise's record: a league-best 77–51, a first-half title — the club's first since 2016…
- 2026What is open
On 28 May 2026, Judge Jamie C. Woods ruled that the police recordings at the center of the tapes case violated both the federal and state wiretap acts, ordered the tapes destroyed, and barred any use of or reference to them — and the destruction was stayed pending appeal.
- 2026The council and the City Hall cost, re-verified
The roster stands: The Common Council as the Today portrait printed it stands unchanged at 10 November 2026.
- 2026The labor line, re-pulled: September 2026 is still the latest month
The rate re-verified first-hand: The Bureau of Labor Statistics' own table for the South Bend–Mishawaka metropolitan area, extracted 30 October 2026, carries the September 2026 unemployment rate at 4.1 percent, preliminary and not seasonally adjusted…
- 2026The Portage Manor clock: day 35 of 180
Where the clock stands: The county commissioners' 2–1 vote of 6 October 2026, Rafael Morton dissenting, approved a purchase agreement, an access agreement, and a memorandum of option selling Portage Manor and thirteen additional acres to St. Thomas More Academy for $400,000, conditioned on a $9 million investment in the property.
- 2026The Memorial tower: the first floor's move, on the hospital's own announcements
On 31 August 2026 the system announced that the tower's second floor was nearing completion and that the adult intensive care unit would move into its new 26-bed space — from its temporary home on the third floor of the Memorial Leighton Heart and Vascular Center…
- 2026The police tapes: the appeal is filed, and reported carried to the state's highest court
The state the banked files left, and the two steps since: The Controversies and Today accounts both closed the tapes case at June 2026: Judge Jamie C. Woods's order of 28 May 2026 in the St. Joseph Superior Court (cause 71D06-1209-MI-000159) held the recordings unlawful under both the Indiana and federal wiretap acts…
- 2026The behavioral-health consolidation, on its eve
Announced, dated, and not yet complete: On 15 October 2026 Beacon Health System announced its decision to consolidate its inpatient behavioral-health service line at the Memorial Epworth Center in South Bend: the inpatient service at the Elkhart Center for Behavioral Medicine — in Elkhart, printed at its own city's boundary…
- 2026The schools clock, and the portrait's remaining dated lines
The superintendent search: Mansour Eid's retirement on 30 June 2027 stands as announced, and the search the Today portrait called the district's known next business now has its documented shape: the board will run a broad national search, the opening likely advertised on the Indiana School Boards Association's site…
- 2026South Bend Today: How Current This Record Is
Verified to 10 November 2026, item by item as dated: The lines stand as follows. The council roster is unchanged since the caucus of 20 May 2026, on the council's own documents through the autumn (the entry below).
- 2026–2027The schools' current year
The district remains the only one in Indiana operating under a federal desegregation consent decree, entered in 1980 and never declared unitary; that standing fact of 1980 is also a fact of November 2026.