‘Era of growth and opportunity’: A Q&A with South Bend’s Caleb Bauer
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Demand for housing has encouraged greater collaboration in recent years between South Bend officials and private developers. From new apartments downtown and near the University of Notre Dame to infill housing scattered across the west side, the city continues to build upon a stabilizing population after decades of loss.
The city, however, has also taken action in several recent examples where city leaders say local developers failed to keep promises outlined in agreements.
Caleb Bauer, South Bend’s executive director of community investment, talked to Inside INdiana Business about what his office does and the city’s plans to work with private investors as redevelopment continues.
What does the executive director community investment do in South Bend?
The Department of Community Investment performs a lot of different functions in city government and has significant influence in the direction regarding the funds that are used to advance the chief priorities of the administration. That ranges from economic development to urban planning to building performances, and the Office of Sustainability and other teams that work on engaging in meaningful ways with our community.
That sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, but it’s really a department that’s focused on helping to support the private sector and helping to envision the future of our community in coordinator and collaboration with our community.
We’re seeing a lot of rapid growth near Notre Dame and promising projects downtown. Can you speak to where the city is in achieving its housing goals?
The city, like many cities, has a need for housing across the board at all income levels, but this is not unique to South Bend. Particularly, we have needs at the very low-income threshold, so affordable housing, and then, interestingly, we do have significant demand and lack of supply for your higher income levels of housing, and that can compress the middle tier housing options and drive prices up in those areas, too.
So, what we’ve seen is some increases in rents over the last few years. That’s a good indication to us that the downtown market, particularly on the rental side, has need for additional supply and we’ve seen the private sector respond with a lot of interest in both affordable housing developments through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, but also market rate housing development. When you look at the large building in downtown, Liberty Tower, looking at about 100 new units there, and significant growth on the rental and for sale housing side in the areas around Notre Dame.
So, all told we have more than 1,500 units of housing in process, funded through different sources, that developers are working on right now. And, we know that is exciting, but we also need to keep our foot on the gas as far as housing goes.
And, we’ve really shifted our focus towards finding ways to reduce costs for infill housing development in our neighborhoods that did see lack of investment over many decades, which led to high rates of vacancy and the need for the city to step in to remove dilapidated housing.
Those efforts have been successful but now the hard work begins of, how do we refill those missing teeth in the neighborhoods, and then that’s been a big focus for our department.
We’ve seen a lot of investment in the Northeast Neighborhood and Near Northwest. Are there areas the city feels should be the next focus for development?
Yeah, I think certainly, there has been a lot of development activity in the NNN, the Northeast Neighborhood.
We think the Southeast Neighborhood, as well, is starting to see a lot more activity. There’s a community development corporation that operates solely in the Southeast Neighborhood, 466 Works, that’s been a great partner, but we’re also beginning to see some market activity there.
We expect to see, and hope to see, continued expansion of market interest. Kennedy Park, which is the neighborhood just to the north of where the new Martin Luther King Community Center is, may be on the radar for some developers.
It really is, for us, making those public investments that can serve as a guide and as an anchor that can then help spur private investment. We certainly hope to see that with the MLK Dream Center.
We’ve seen that in projects like Howard Park, where a public investment can then lead to a lot of add-on private investments in the neighborhood there. So, that’s been our strategy for a number of years and that continues to advance. We are looking at potentially significant park improvements at Kennedy Park, too.
So, I would say the Kennedy Park neighborhood and the Southeast Neighborhood are two that we think are kind of next up when you think about the activity that you’ve seen in the NNN. We think those are two neighborhoods that are kind of on the borderline of moving into a healthier housing market.
There have been some recent examples of the city taking action against developers that haven’t necessarily held up their promises, such as Bare Hands Brewery and local developer Dave Matthews. Are there lessons to be learned from this and how does this inform the city as it works with developers in the future?
There are expectations when we’re talking about expenditure of public funds. Those are commitments not made lightly and they do come with commitments from the developer, and that is part of accountability and making sure that the city’s investment is protected.
So, yes, there will be cases where the city does have to take action to hold those developers accountable for the commitments that they made as part of those legal agreements. I think that shouldn’t come as a surprise to developers.
There are lots of developers that understand that entry into a legal contract is binding and that we’re willing to work with them when challenges arise, and we have done that in both of these cases as well to try and find a path forward.
It’s something to know that the city of South Bend is open for business and we are willing to work with developers across the board. And, we do understand when there are obstacles that arise, but what we can’t do is completely forego the commitments made from developers when they aren’t willing to work with the city to find a path forward and so, in these two cases, that is why we have had to turn toward the legal action route.
It’s hard to talk about business and development in South Bend without hearing talk of the electric vehicle plant coming to New Carlisle. We expect some of that growth will spill into South Bend. What is the city doing from a community development standpoint to prepare?
Certainly, GM is going to need employees and they’re going to want employees that live within a reasonable commute of the plant. We would love for as many of those employees to live in the city of South Bend as is possible.
GM’s a great employer. They pay a living wage, and I think we want to see our residents able to take advantage of those employment opportunities with General Motors. So, there’s a couple opportunities there.
One, we think the neighborhoods on the far west side of the city could see new interest in construction and development because of the proximity to the plant, which is an exciting piece, and that’s been part of our infill strategy is setting things up for some of those organic opportunities to grow.
And, secondly, we are looking very seriously and working on identifying the best interventions a city can take on the workforce development side. How can we partner with General Motors or support what they’re doing to make sure that our residents are able and provided with the training and skills that they need to be able to take advantage of the job opportunities that will be at the plant? So, that’s something we’re looking at and we’ll continue to work to make sure that our residents can maximize this opportunity. It is a transformational investment from GM and we’re excited.
On a related note, South Bend has been working on its own electric vehicle plan. Can you give us an overview of the planning and its next steps?
The electric vehicle plan is about setting the framework by which we make the transition to EVs and understanding what is the city’s role in that transition.
Right now, we have seven electric vehicle chargers that are owned and operated by the city of South Bend; a couple in the downtown area, one at Howard Park, a few in downtown parking garages and then one at Potawatomi Zoo.
And, the question that we raised in going into this planning process is what is the public charging infrastructure needs to look like versus how can we help support the development of the private charging infrastructure, if you think about a grocery store or an apartment complex.
We’re already seeing that happen in some areas, and so we want to make sure from a regulatory framework, we’re making that easy from pulling permits and having clear guidelines throughout the installation of the chargers, but then also from a public investment standpoint where the city can strategically make investments that supplement what the private market is doing, and can make sure that there is an equity focus in those investments so that nobody’s being left behind in the EV transition.
How can the public interact with the Community Investment office?
There’s a number of ways. Certainly engaging with a plan, like the EV plan. Additionally, our team manages and runs neighborhood planning processes. We’ve done a number over the last couple of years — five in the last two years — and those are intensive work sessions with neighbors about the future dreams and goals for their neighborhood.
Our team prides itself on really having developed a rigorous process that not only can help bring out the wants and desires of neighbors, but also develop a plan that is actionable and realistic so that we’re not just developing a plan that then goes on a shelf and it’s a nice idea that nobody ever sees come to fruition. Our goal is to develop a plan that reflects the desires of neighbors and then move forward with implementation to advance the priorities of that plan.
Obviously, plans are long-term vision, so you’re not going to advance everything in the next couple of years. But, neighbors want to see progress and so what has been a priority for us is making sure that we do find projects within the plan that we can move forward in short-term so that they know this isn’t just an exercise or a conversation that goes away.
As well, we do have an Engagement and Economic Empowerment team that’s going out and canvassing in the community related to specific initiatives. It could be neighbor plans, making sure neighbors know about planning processes and how they can engage. It can be programmatically. For example, we’re in the midst of the home repair program. The application period is closed, but when it was open, our EEE team was canvassing in the neighborhoods, making sure that eligible property owners, homeowners, were aware of the program and able to apply if they were interested.
On top of all that, we do regularly meet with all of the neighborhood associations in the city of South Bend who are in a neighborhood consortium, and so we’re hearing from them on a quarterly basis, but then also more frequently by having staff attend their regular neighborhood meetings about their concerns and then percolating those throughout the administration, whether it’s questions about traffic signals or feedback on an infrastructure project. Those are things that we can then distribute out to other departments within the city and make sure that those concerns are heard.
Anything else?
We’re really excited in the direction that South Bend is heading. We’ve seen modest growth in population, which for South Bend is a huge accomplishment after decades of population loss, but we also know that that growth that we saw in the most recent census, we can’t take that for granted, and we need to build upon it, and so that has been a priority for our department and for Mayor Muller and the administration as a whole and will continue to be in the future.
So, we’re excited about the path South Bend is on. We think there’s more great things to come in the future and we encourage those in the private sector who haven’t taken a look at South Bend, maybe now’s the time to think about making investments in South Bend, because I think what we’ve got going on here is really exciting. There’s a lot of great opportunities here in a community that really has turned the corner and is entering a new era of growth and opportunity.