South Bend’s historic Lafayette Building to see $8M redevelopment
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Once on Indiana Landmarks’ 10 Most Endangered list, the historic Lafayette Building in downtown South Bend is poised to see new life.
City officials entered into an agreement last week to sell the building, which is believed to be the city’s first commercial office building, to a pair of Brooklyn, New York-based developers for $10,000.
The developers, organized under the name Lafayette OpCo, are required to invest at least $8 million in the project resulting in at least 30 apartments and ground-floor retail, per their agreement with the city.
The five-story building at 115 S. Lafayette Blvd. was initially built as a two-floor office building in 1901 with its top floors added just years later.
It was named a Local Historic Landmark in 2000 and for years housed the offices of attorneys, physicians, real estate and life insurance agents, medical companies and notable local civil rights leaders Chester and Elizabeth Allen.
The city took over the building in 2018 after its previous owners fell into tax delinquency. Officials took steps to stabilize the building but their work, South Bend Executive Director of Community Investment Caleb Bauer said, primarily addressed protecting the building from outside elements. Significant work will still be needed to rehabilitate the inside.
Caleb Bauer talks about how South Bend came to own the historic Lafayette Building.
Bauer said the city held onto the building longer than it had initially hoped to, due in part to uncertainty brought in the early days of the pandemic.
City officials issued a request for proposals and organized public tours of the building about a year ago to drum up interest in potential redevelopment. Though the city didn’t receive any proposals through its initial RFP, officials were approached later by two interested developer teams.
Bauer said the Lafayette OpCo team’s interest in preserving the building’s architecture stood out to city officials. The developers have proposed a series of smaller, efficiency or studio-style apartments in the building filling a gap in downtown South Bend, which has more commonly seen one-, two- and three-bedroom units prioritized in recent apartment projects.
“When you think about larger cities, studios and efficiencies are sometimes the majority of available units in some large, more dense urban areas,” Bauer said. “So, I think it’s exciting to see that that’s a product that’s desirable here.”
The developers’ agreement with the city does come with additional requirements. Work on the building must begin with a year of closing and project completion must be met within five years.
The developers have also agreed not to reduce the size of the building’s skylight and atrium which spans all five floors of the building. The team must also provide updates twice a year to the city’s redevelopment commission throughout construction — something city officials have included in more recent development agreements to standardize the city’s reporting requirements, Bauer said.
The project comes on the heels of city officials’ decision last month to end a relationship with Bare Hands Brewing, which had failed over seven years to meet deadlines on a proposed downtown brewery using land purchased from the city for $1. South Bend officials also, earlier this year, sued local developer David Matthews of Matthews LLC for missing deadlines on a grocery store promised in the development of a high-rise apartment complex in the city’s East Bank neighborhood.
Bauer speaks about searching for developers to rehabilitate the Lafayette Building.
Bauer said the Brooklyn-based developers responsible for Lafayette Building redevelopment have ties to the city — one grew up in South Bend while another is a Notre Dame graduate.
He said recent steps taken to standardize reporting come as an effort to ensure both developers and city officials have a clear understanding of expectations.
The community investment head said South Bend is excited to work with developers who can make investments in saving buildings the city may only have limited resources to intervene in.
“We’re excited that that has come to fruition here in this case,” Bauer said. “And, certainly look forward to seeing construction start as soon as possible.”