On List of “Dying Cities”, Failures in South Bend, IN Provide Lessons for New Rochelle

Written By: Robert Cox

SouthBend AerialThe Wall Street Journal published an article by William McGurn that might have resonance for New Rochelle residents.

Democrats and Dying Cities What South Bend tells us about the 2012 election ($$).

Last January, Newsweek magazine ranked South Bend, IN among its list of top 10 list of dying American cities. Now, I have lived in South Bend, IN while attending the University of Notre Dame. My brother and his family live there now. I make regular pilgrimages to South Bend every football season. South Bend is doing much better than when I went to school there but it continues to struggle.

McGurn describes South Bend as full of crime-plagued neighborhoods and boarded-up homes” with “people fleeing—is a challenged city.” New Rochelle has its problems but it is better off than that. For North End and East End residents of the city this can be misleading because neighboring Mishiwaka, IN is booming, providing many wonderful amenities a few minutes drive for many South Bend residents; for South End and West End residents things are still pretty bleak.

While Indiana has been doing relatively well under Governor Mitch Daniels, South Bend has declined.

…when Gov. Daniels succeeded in getting a property tax cap through in 2008, South Bend responded by pressing the county to raise local income taxes—threatening that otherwise it would have to cut police and crossing guards and the like. Today that same mayor says he has $9.1 million in extra revenue he wants to spend on another round of capital projects. Even the South Bend Tribune found this too much, pleading in an editorial, “Taxpayers, speak up!”

McGurn blames political attitudes. He calls South Bend “a classic Democratic city, with a classic Democratic approach to business.”

New Rochellans will want to make special note of the following:

Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow at Chapman University who writes on successful cities, says that places such as South Bend often overlook their homegrown businesses and their real competitive advantages, e.g., a low cost of living. “Often these advantages are very different from what the pundits tell them,” he says. “For example, they are told to invest in ‘clusters’ in fashionable fields like green tech or nanotechnology or in the arts, when they should be trying to figure out how to be themselves but only better.”

He could be describing South Bend. Instead of providing a low-tax, low-regulation, business-friendly environment for all comers, the city is chockablock with special zones and industrial parks whose tax revenues go to other government-directed investment projects.

Meanwhile, the locals whose businesses have been here for years (restaurants, cleaners, etc.) get none of the favorable treatment the city rolls out for the larger and sexier newcomers. When people complain, the city fathers point to things such as South Bend’s recent designation as an “All American City,” a designation bestowed by judges who haven’t visited.

Sound familiar?

One thought on “On List of “Dying Cities”, Failures in South Bend, IN Provide Lessons for New Rochelle”

  1. Are New Rochelle residents aware of the BID’s influence?
    The City of New Rochelle has had momentum to allow “big” business and has ignored the many small busineses in New Rochelle which this article suggests are important. The BID has not supported this viewpoint. The people who shop downtown are looking for things they can afford to buy. Instead of catering to those who live here the thrust in the past has been to look for developers who claim they will bring in high end customers. Reality has shown this does not happen in downtown New Rochelle for many reasons, including the lack of sufficient parking.

    I hope and pray the residents of New Rochelle wake up to this reality.

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