A Neighbor Says the Rubble Went Into Chemical Wells. South Bend Still Wants to Lend $1.7 Million, Interest-Free, to Build There.

South Bend's County-City Building, home of the Common Council chambers. Photo: Tysto, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Rebecca Ford says she watched it happen. When the old building at South Main and Donald streets came down, she told South Bend's redevelopment commission last month, the demolition crew pushed the rubble into wells that had held industrial chemicals "that would strip electrical components to their bones," then covered it over. WVPE recorded her account.

The commission voted unanimously anyway. On Sept. 24 it approved an extra $700,000 loan for Indianapolis-based KCG Development, on top of $1 million the city had already committed, to get the former industrial lot ready for Heartwood Commons, a 50-unit affordable apartment complex. KCG itself acknowledged that the contractor who tore down the previous building buried the debris instead of hauling it away. KCG and city officials said testing showed the soil isn't too contaminated for residential use.

This week the money hit a tougher room. The Common Council tabled the ordinance that would put $1.7 million of city money into the $16.7 million project as a direct loan paid through the Southside Development Area TIF, WNDU reported Wednesday, citing its partners at the South Bend Tribune. Neighbors and some council members want more transparency about the buried demolition debris, plus contamination testing and long-term safety guarantees, before the city signs on.

A meeting summary posted by Citizen Portal describes the deal as a 0% loan backing a low-income housing tax credit project, and says city staff and the developer told the council the environmental tests found no residential-level contamination.

Zero percent. Tax-increment financing works by capturing the growth in property-tax revenue inside a district, money that would otherwise be shared with the other local governments that tax the same land. When a city parks that money in an interest-free loan to a private developer, it is choosing to earn nothing on it, and taxpayers deserve to know exactly what they're getting in exchange.

Nobody is arguing the south side doesn't need housing. The question is narrower, and more uncomfortable for City Hall: if the developer's own account is that a contractor buried a building in the ground, why did it take a public hearing and a tabled ordinance before anyone pressed for the full environmental picture? City officials say the soil checks out. The people who live next to the lot want to see the work behind that answer, and they're entitled to it.

It isn't the first time this month council members have bristled at being handed a finished product. When Mayor James Mueller rolled out his data-center framework on Oct. 6, Council Member Oliver Davis Jr. told WVPE the mayor was writing rules that belong to the legislative branch, and Council Member Sherry Bolden-Simpson said members learned of the plan when the public did.

The council is set to take Heartwood Commons back up at its next meeting, Monday, Oct. 26, in the third-floor chambers of City Hall at 215 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The meeting is open to the public and also available online through Microsoft Teams, according to the city calendar.

Here's what the council ought to have in hand before Monday's vote: the complete testing data, who did the testing, what became of those wells, and who pays if something turns up after 50 families move in. A loan that costs the developer nothing should at least cost City Hall a few straight answers.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.