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Economic Outlook

Jeff Rea’s Blog Post (Episode 1504)

October 22, 2019
Author Jeff Rea

About Jeff

Jeff Rea is currently the President & CEO of the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce. Jeff has over 20 years of executive leadership experience in our region while working in areas such as Economic Development, Business Development, City Planning, Marketing, and Local Government. Jeff has a degree from Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC and executive management continuing education work at the University of Notre Dame.

Welcome to my blog post related to our taping on our show about development in Downtown Mishawaka. I sure appreciate your support of WNIT, Public Television (PBS), and our show!

If you are not familiar with the show, we hope you’ll make plans to join us each week as we bring you stories about the people, companies and communities driving economic growth in our region! If you want to take a look at some of our previous shows, their available at www.wnit.org/economicoutlook.

This show was pretty fun for me. Many of you know, I spent a lot of time in Mishawaka and had a chance years ago to work on many of the projects we discussed. I passed the torch to Mayor Wood and he has run with it! And now, the Mishawaka Skyline has changed significantly. We decided to invite the Mayor and City Planner Ken Prince to the studio for an update on what is happening with the Mill, Beutter Park and Downtown in general. I think we could have talked for hours, we had a lot to talk about.

Mishawaka’s redevelopment is really a fine case study on urban development and redevelopment. The projects you are seeing now are some 20+ years in the making. Uniroyal filed bankruptcy in 1997 and left an abandoned 43 acres, 50+ buildings, and almost 2 million square feet, on the river. Mishawaka acquired, cleaned up, and now is redeveloping the site. In the meantime, you saw quality of place improvements to Battell Park, Lincoln Park, Kamm Island, Central Park, and the development of Beutter Park to help set the stage. You also saw new condos at Kamm Island, new housing on Mishawaka Avenue, the redevelopment of the former Main Jr. High Building and the Carnegie Library.

The Mayor and Mr. Prince covered a lot of ground. If are a fan of the Riverwalk, Beutter Park, or downtown, you’ll want to catch this conversation as we take a closer look at Downtown and some key projects underway there that are spurring economic growth and transforming the downtown.

Your feedback is valuable, feel free to reach out anytime (jrea@sbrchamber.com)  with comments, compliments, criticisms, story ideas. I’ll do my best to get back you as soon as possible. Also, follow-us on facebook, Twitter (Jeff_Rea), or at WWW.WNIT.org/economicoutlook for all the latest info on the show. 

Enjoy the show!