South Bend invites LaSalle Park residents to plan future of historically Black neighborhood

SOUTH BEND ― Starting this week, city planners will host events to envision the future of the LaSalle Park neighborhood, whose history of citizen activism in spite of neglect is so robust that it has its own chapter in a recent book about South Bend's African American history.

Known by natives as "The Lake," after the small pond called Beck's Lake in the neighborhood's eponymous city park, LaSalle Park has long been home to a good portion of the city's Black residents. Until about the 1960s, however, it was also home to some of the city's last dirt roads, a dump that infused the soil with toxins and rat-infested public housing built on top of that dump.

Cleanup: Waste was dumped in a South Bend neighborhood. The soil-based lead will finally be treated.

But neighborhood planning meetings beginning Tuesday hope to build on progress made in recent years, including an environmental cleanup last year and a $2.1 million city project to renovate park infrastructure this fall. By next spring, the park is to have remodeled basketball courts, additional pavilions and walking paths, and a roller-skating loop similar to the ice trail in Howard Park.

In a statement, 2nd District Common Council member Henry Davis Jr., who grew up in LaSalle Park, said he's eager to see change after decades of environmental racism and wealth-sapping lending practices.

"The residents of this area deserve so much better," Davis said in a statement. "Development is an intentional effort that comes from the local government and is usually followed by private investment."

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How to participate in LaSalle Park neighborhood plans

A neighborhood survey is open until Nov. 3 for resident feedback. The three-part planning process, each phase of which is to occur at the Charles Black Community Center at 3419 W. Washington St., will include:

• A discussion of the neighborhood's housing opportunities and challenges followed by a Q&A session on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 6 p.m. The keynote speaker will be Marques King, a Black architect and urban designer from Detroit who says he was inspired to study the "science of cities" by the stories contrasting his hometown's industrial glory to some of its current harsh realities.

• A workshop to last from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 26, where residents are asked to come and share their vision for the neighborhood's housing, infrastructure, land use, amenities and other topics.

• A workshop to last from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 16, which will recap the planning process and open the floor for discussion about the neighborhood's top priorities.

The challenges and opportunities facing LaSalle Park

A city presentation shows that LaSalle Park and Kennedy Park, a nearby predominantly Black neighborhood that formed a new neighborhood plan last year, bore the brunt of a racist lending practice known as redlining.

But South Bend Mayor James Mueller said the west side can capitalize on billions of dollars of investment and thousands of good jobs coming to western St. Joseph County this decade.

Redlining, which began in the 1930s and was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, is shown to have drained wealth from generations of African Americans in LaSalle Park and Kennedy Park.

Both areas received the lowest possible grade from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, meaning they were deemed highly risky. Banks denied funding or charged high interest rates to neighborhood residents who sought mortgages.

While South Bend's citywide median home value today is about $95,000, according to census data, the city presentation reports that the median value of homes in LaSalle Park is about $30,000. Median household income in the neighborhood in 2020 was 43% of the inflation-adjusted 1960 figure.

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The Lake also suffered following South Bend's manufacturing collapse. Many of the workers who lost jobs when Studebaker closed in the 1960s or Bendix Corp. shut down most operations in the 1980s lived in LaSalle Park.

Since 1960, LaSalle Park has lost more than 40% of its occupied housing units, city data shows, and has been replete with overgrown vacant lots since at least the early 2000s.

"We’re concerned about the future of this neighborhood," Jorden Giger, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2nd District Democratic primary bid this May and is involved with the LaSalle Park Neighborhood Association, told The Tribune.

"We want to ensure that younger people are able to move into homeownership. We want to make sure that they are getting jobs that pay a living wage or salary. That we can see future generations, future families in general, prosper in the neighborhood. Folks have been ignored for so long."

Mueller told The Tribune he sees opportunity in the west side's hollow spots as the momentum of Michiana's economy moves west from the South Bend-Elkhart region.

In the coming years, a $3.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant and an Indiana Dinosaur Museum will open west of U.S. 31, creating thousands of jobs and the need for thousands of housing units.

“There’s a lot of opportunity there. If you look at a map of where empty lots are, there’s more on the west side of the city," Mueller said.

Though private investment today is scant, Mueller is optimistic enough about the west side's future to anticipate concerns about gentrification and the displacement of poorer residents.

"We want to find that balance and make sure that we’re seeing progress," Mueller said, "but not seeing such drastic change that it leads to displacement.”

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: LaSalle Park residents can help draft neighborhood plan going forward