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SOUTH END REDEVELOPMENT COMMISSION SPECIA MEETING: July 10. 1975 Paae 10. fact, from the developers that they had done research and decided that South Bend was over- officed' and that it would be silly to build more offices when we already have more new office buildings and more remodeled offices than the City seems to be able to fill. Now, here we are - -that was the excuse, you know, one of the reasons why we were going to go to the merchandising -type. Now, here we are with Block 6, considering a plan that has the emphasis on office buildings, and I don't understand this conflict. So, if there are too many offices when you were talking about Super Block but we seem to need more offices when we are talking about it now." Mr. Brownell advised the last Study that we had made here as a Commission was made by Real Estate Research Corporation. They updated the LUM Study and found there was a need for more new office space. As a result of that Study, we changed the land use on Block 6 from predominently housing to office use, to this secondary service /commercials Since that Study was made, there have been two buildings built with office space- =they are both six -story buildings--and they are either on the south side or the west side of the St. Joseph Bank Building. Now how much those two new buildings have effected the situation in regard to new office space, of course, we don't know. We know it affected it some. But the last official Study we had made indicated the need for more office space. Now whether that is soaked up, we don't know. To the answer, Ms. Derbeck replied, "So obviously the situation has changed, so how can you go by that old Study? And the First Bank developing group, who are local, aught to be capable of a little local research around here. The Chair requested if Mr. Allan Bloomquist, with the First Bank & Trust Company, if he would address himself to that. Mr. Bloomquist said he believed those to be two different ques- tions: 1. You have the very near term vs. a 'little bit longer range, and based on the data that we have, on the very near term, there is not a strong office demand for down- town high -rise type office buildings because of the new buildings that have gone up in the past five years. Of course, for longer term purposes, we are optimistic that the downtown South Bend will develop very vigorously. Relative, however, to Block 6, based upon - -I don't re- member the specific figures, but as I recall, having gone through some analysis, I think the market segment that you would be going after for developments in Block 6, and secondly and more important, the economics of development in Block 6, such as Lloyd Taylor's group has suggested, is in my opinion, significantly, reason- ably attractive, and has probability for success over a three -year horizon, economically, at least, based upon 13� �+f� l s