A closer look at pre-development in action

Pre-development.

It’s a term you may not have heard before, but don’t be surprised if it could end up making your community a better place.

Just what does “pre-development” mean?

It is the forward-thinking act of municipal planning, resulting in action taken by a city to set the stage for future economic development and prosperity. 

Pre-development takes on many forms. It can involve organizational, communications and educational programs needed to prepare the residents of a neighborhood for change. It includes the site planning and demolition of outdated facilities to open up raw acreage for new development. The city planning and expansion of infrastructure, be it roads for better residential or commercial access, utilities for industrial expansion, or new sewer and water systems for a fresh new neighborhood – all fall under the pre-development planning action for the city. Toxic site cleanup efforts usually fall under the purview of the City’s pre-development planning, because it removes potentially high remediation costs as an incentive to attract private developers. 

Especially in touch economic times, solvent municipalities like South Bend have a limited number of pre-development funding tools at their disposal. These may include tax increment financing (TIF) supplemented with state and federal funding.

Implicit in the act of pre-development is the promise of the private sector to fill the economic vacuum after the City’s work is done. Once a site is cleaned up, a new road is built or a new sewer system is completed, the open market usually takes over to bring the City’s vision to fruition.  A new tax revenue stream, new businesses, higher employment rates, and reduction in City services to combat crime and provide social services, are among the long-term payoffs for the municipality. 

The following are examples of current pre-development plans in various stages of progress in the City of South Bend. 

Rink Riverside site to become East Bank Town Homes

East Bank Town Homes, South Bend, Ind.

Originally home to the old Rink Riverside Printing facility, this desirable St. Joseph riverfront site, alongside the Colfax Avenue Bridge in downtown South Bend, was purchased by the City as Rink Printing moved to South Michigan Street into the Old Shaffer Gear works. 

“The facility was an old wooden and brick building and was in rough shape,” says Robert Mathia, assistant director of economic development for the City of South Bend. “Once we purchased it, we tore down the old facility. Originally, the Rink property was to be part of a much larger project, but financial constraints, market conditions and revisions to the East Bank plan caused specific plans for the site to be downsized.”

Mathia says that three different groups of investors expressed interest in developing the site before the bottom dropped out of the local commercial real estate market. Today, as the economic future looks brighter, Forest Beach Builders has stepped forward to work with the City to develop East Bank Town Homes.  

“The concept being followed now fits current financial and market conditions and has the best chance of success,” Mathia says.

Pre-development worked in this instance because if the old Rink building was still privately held, it would still be standing as an obstacle to development of the site. During the recent economic downturn, the owner would not have been able to get the funding to tear the building down. With good planning, the City was able to get the site shovel-ready, timed for the economic upswing.   

A community gathering for Eddy Street Commons

Eddy Street Commons, South Bend, Ind.

Eddy Street Commons is the City of South Bend’s newest mixed-use development. It is one of the best examples of pre-development in South Bend, demonstrating how the City’s Economic Development team partnered with the University of Notre Dame, the adjacent neighborhood, area developers and a variety of local investors to drive the process forward to completion.

Eddy Street Commons incorporates office space, shopping, dining and a variety of residential offerings that include apartments, townhomes, alumni investment properties and corporate-owned investment properties for companies in nearby Innovation Park.  

Over a year and a half of pre-development planning took place, which involved all the institutional partners, professional planning firms and developers, as well as extensive meetings with neighborhood residents and the Northeast Neighborhood Council. Once the pre-development plans were created, the public had the opportunity to review, modify and accept the plan. 

Jeff Gibney, executive director of the City of South Bend’s Department of Community and Economic Development, says the biggest driver of the project was the University of Notre Dame’s need for a campus-like setting close to campus that integrated residential and commercial amenities.

“When Notre Dame was recruiting professors, administrators and others to move to work for the university, many prospective candidates expressed a desire for more of a college town atmosphere,” Gibney says. “They did not necessarily want to live in the suburbs. They wanted to walk to this type of development, on a sidewalk, from their house in the nearby neighborhood. It was really a smart move on Notre Dame’s part, and they had trustees that really believed in the project.”

Don Inks, the City’s director of economic development, believes the adaptability of the City, and the community gathering to change the pre-development plan on a continuous basis, helped move this project forward to completion.

“The large scale and the rapid timetable of what we first thought it was going to be and what it is today are totally different,” Inks says.

Erskine Hills Shopping District

An example of the City of South Bend’s larger, long-term pre-development process is the Erskine Hills Shopping District. 

“We started our pre-development work in 2001 and 2002 when the Scottsdale Mall was at its lowest point,” says Bill Schalliol, project manager. “The mall had lost a couple of major cornerstone tenants.  The City was approached several times about buying the mall, and although we are not in the mall development and management business, we knew we had to do something on the south side.”

The City’s pre-development plan for this south side location was proactive. The City joined the International Council for Shopping Centers to help understand current trends in retail development. Independent traffic consultants were brought in to recommend better traffic flows, and engineering groups were engaged to better understand the utility issues for retail expansion. 

“We then took on a very comprehensive look at what we had in surrounding land use,” Schalliol says. “All of this was done with almost no money, utilizing our internal staff, local utilities and a few consultants.”

In late 2002, the declaration of the South Side Development Area was rolled out to the public. This created a tax increment financing (TIF) district and redevelopment area to provide the City with a funding source to improve the area and attract developers.

“We had two different development groups that came in, one for the Erskine Village site (the old Scottsdale Mall) and a big box development group that put in the Wal-Mart at Ireland and Michigan (Erskine Commons) instead,” Schalliol says. “In the five years prior to 2002, we had only about 30,000 total square feet of new development in this area. In the two years after we pre-developed the plan, we had almost 1.3 million square feet of new development with more than $200 million in capital invested on the south side.”