An effort to redevelop what’s believed to be South Bend’s first office building continues to struggle.
Hardly a day goes by that you don’t see someone sharing on social media old photos of the beautiful buildings that once stood downtown. They were lost to demolition during the so-called urban renewal of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
So in September city officials were excited when a South Bend native now living in New York city proposed renovating the historic Lafayette Building. The vacant five-story structure across from the County-City Building, built in 1901, housed the offices of Black attorneys J. Chester and Elizabeth Allen, who were civil rights leaders in the city.
The city’s redevelopment commission agreed to sell the building for $10,000 to a limited liability group led by Rachel Brandenberger. In exchange for the low price, Brandenberger has agreed to start the renovation within a year and finish within five years.
She plans apartments on floors two through five and ground-floor retail. She must retain the building’s picturesque atrium. The city in 2019 spent about $750,000 to stabilize the building and stop water from entering. That work included replacing the building’s roof and renovating the atrium glass.
But on Thursday the commission agreed to give Brandenberger another extension, this one until the end of the year, to close on the property. Joe Molnar, property development manager with the city’s Community Investment department, told the commission that Brandenberger’s architect discovered that a fire occurred in the building’s basement in the ‘30s. Now they need to make sure the building’s foundation will be strong enough to support the added weight of the renovation.
