Mishawaka.

• Author: Kurowski, Jeff
• Position: Real estate development in Mishawaka, Indiana

The automobile and modern highways have made political boundaries less important, and one place in Indiana where that is particularly evident is the city of Mishawaka.

Long viewed as a bedroom community for South Bend, its neighbor to the west, Mishawaka took great strides during the 1980s toward becoming "the hub of Michiana," according to Mayor Robert C. Beutter.

Originally the creation of television-station marketing departments, the concept of Michiana has become reality to the 300,000 people who live in the region straddling the border between Indiana and Michigan. The primary population centers are the cities of South Bend, Mishawaka and Elkhart, with Mishawaka fortunate to be in the middle.

"I talk about the South Bend-Mishawaka-Elkhart community," says Beutter, 57, an attorney who is in his 10th year as mayor. "The growth that's occurring is South Bend and Elkhart both growing toward us. That strengthens our whole community. Anything good in St. Joseph and Elkhart counties helps us."

Although Mishawaka is in a good location, a great amount of private and public sector effort has been needed to make the city of 43,000 people a growth area. The era of rapid growth began in the late 1970s when the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. of Youngstown, Ohio, chose the far north end of Mishawaka as the site of its University Park Mall.

Since the mall opened in 1979, Cressy and Everett Commercial Company Inc. of Mishawaka has been working on getting corporate and professional offices in its Edison Lakes Corporate Park, located between the mall and the city itself.

Last year, Cressy and Everett Commercial, co-developers of the mall, hit another home run when National Steel Corp. opened its new corporate headquarters in Edison Lakes. National Steel, which moved its corporate headquarters from Pittsburgh, now employs between 400 and 500 people at the new location in Mishawaka. The average salary of headquarters office personnel is in the $50,000 range.

"We were tickled to get National Steel," says Len Gheradi, Mishawaka's director of community development. "It was geographically opportune for them, and Edison Lakes exhibits a high-quality construction and transportation environment." National Steel executives wanted to be within a one-day drive of their plants, located at Burns Harbor near Portage as well as in the Detroit and St. Louis areas.

Still, Mishawaka landing National Steel was not a sure thing, says Don Cressy, chairman of the real-estate...