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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK <br /> years.We've done more than five-hundred(500)of them in forty-seven(47) states and we've done <br /> more than eighty-five (85) downtown studies. Of which, one (1) of them was here in South Bend <br /> in 2013.A year later,we were on a team to do an analysis of the Westside Corridors which included <br /> Western Avenue and Lincolnway. This was the third study we undertook here in the City. This <br /> time we are focusing on, what we call, the in-town neighborhoods. It is very important that cities <br /> build on strength. You want to strengthen your core and then you move out from that core. It is a <br /> much more successful policy than doing scatter-site in-fill development. <br /> She continued, We have a very different approach to market-analysis. We look at market potential <br /> as opposed to market demand. Now typically, a residential market analysis will look at what the <br /> projection is in the City for number of households over the next five (5) years. If a city has <br /> historically been losing households, those projections will be negative. That means it is going to <br /> be very hard to delineate what the market should be and what should be built. If there hasn't been <br /> any new construction in the City, it is even more challenging. So,many years ago in the early 90s, <br /> we decided, since most of our work was going to be in cities,to develop a methodology that could <br /> get at what market could be in a city that had been losing households.We thought the best approach <br /> would be to look at market potential. That is a very simple theory based on the fact that even in <br /> cities that are losing population, people are still moving. If you can understand who is moving, <br /> what their housing preferences are, what their financial capabilities are, you can construct a <br /> program of new housing that will actually correspond to those capabilities and preferences. That <br /> leads to a very successful rebuilding of a City. <br /> She went on, That is what we have done here. We have looked at both the City as a whole and in <br /> three(3)different study areas. The study answers our primary questions and these questions are of <br /> particular interest to developers because they need to fill out pro-formas to see if their project is <br /> going to work.A lot of the information in the study will do that and will help them decided whether <br /> they have a feasible project or not. First,we took a look at what the City is as a whole. As of 2017, <br /> there were about 101,500 people who lived here in about 40,100 households. The interesting thing <br /> about South Bend and every other city we have worked in is that even though we always talk about <br /> the United States being a nation of families, we are actually becoming a nation of one (1) and two <br /> (2)person households. That is primarily because the two (2)largest generations in America today <br /> are mostly one (1) and two (2) person households and they are dominating the housing market. <br /> They are the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. So, South Bend is not unusual in the fact that <br /> sixty-three percent(63%) of all your households contain just one(1) or two (2)persons. The other <br /> mismatch we see is that seventy-three percent (73%) of your housing units are single-family <br /> detached houses. A lot of them were built during the era when America was predominately family <br /> households. So what we have here is a mismatch between the market and the kind of housing stock <br /> you have right now. We have always told cities that have this mismatch that it is even more <br /> important for them to create new housing units that can correspond to the housing preferences of <br /> the current market. <br /> She continued, Looking at the South Bend households by life stage, we see that thirty-seven <br /> percent(37%)of all the households could be characterized as empty-nesters and retirees,these are <br /> mostly Baby Boomers. Another thirty-five percent (35%) are family households, both traditional <br /> and non-traditional. The third segment accounts for younger singles and couples at twenty-eight <br /> percent (28%). That's a very nice balance for the Midwest. We've been working in a number of <br /> cities in Indiana where the percentage of empty-nesters and retirees is exceeding sixty percent <br /> (60%). That means they really need to do something very soon to try and attract younger people <br /> EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT <br /> 455 County-City Building 1 227 W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If 574.235.9173!TTD 574.235.5567 Imm.southbendin.gov <br /> 2 <br />