The museum committee held a meeting in South Bend on March 8th. 
     Andy Laurent from the City of South Bend ( <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ci.south-bend.in.us/">http://www.ci.south-bend.in.us/</a><!-- m --> ) reported to us that clean up at the site was progressing well and was actually coming in under budget. They anticipate everything to be cleaned and leveled back out by August 1st. Around the third week of August they plan to start building the road that will go into the site with completion sometime by October, since all concrete for City projects cannot be poured after this time due to the cold of winter. Once that is done, they plan to start the big push for selling the lots during the winter of 03-04, with construction of new buildings beginning in the spring of 2004.
    Here&#039;s what they would like to see from us. They would like the Forge#2 and Base Fit buildings cleaned up and stabilized so that they look decent by the winter of 03-04. This would keep it from being an eyesore while they are trying to sell the land. Plus they don&#039;t want it looking bad in the background while the Mayor does a ribbon cutting in the spring of 2004.

Todd Ziegler from the Historic Landmarks Foundation ( <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.historiclandmarks.org">http://www.historiclandmarks.org</a><!-- m --> )told us that he could help us line up money to do the stabilization. Some would be from direct grants, some would be matching grants and some would be by using their loan fund. Plus the City would be willing to consider putting forward the money they figured they would have spent tearing down the buildings if nothing were to be done with them. This gave us an amount of around $400,000 that we could raise in short order to use to stabilize the buildings for now. I would think this amount would do a good job of stabilizing the buildings.
     We also discussed the street presence of the former factory site. According to the City plan, the new road will go west directly towards the Boiler House, curve around it and then head directly towards Forge#2 and Base Fit.  It is felt that narrowness of Arnold street and the fact that it is a residential area would prohibit that side from being a main access point. Other than an opening for a service drive, Arnold street is not considered a feasable entry point. It was felt that the street presence is not a terribly important detail since this would be a destination museum and not one that you just drive by and think, &#039;oh, I&#039;ll go there today&#039;. We would of course have a sign that was cleary visible from Chapin Street. Plus it was suggested that a tractor and a plow near the sign at the entrance would be enough to catch the attention of any farm equipment buff driving by. If we can spot an Oliver in the back of a barn from the car, we ought to be able to spot this.

     We then discussed the possibility of building near the Northern Indiana Center for History and Copshaholm ( <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.centerforhistory.org">http://www.centerforhistory.org</a><!-- m --> ) . We were told by John Oxian of the Historic Preservation Commission ( <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://community.michiana.org/historic/homepage.html">http://community.michiana.org/historic/homepage.html</a><!-- m --> ) that there are a limited number of sites near the Center for History that don&#039;t already have homes that are historic landmarks or are in consideration to be historic landmarks. This leaves us with homes that are mostly lower income type homes. It was made abundantly clear that if we were to pursue  the site where these homes are that we would be in for a political fight like we couldn&#039;t imagine by displacing these people.

     It was also made abundantly clear that our museum effort needs to be 100% to succeed. If we try to go in 2 directions, the City is not going to take us serious. It was decided by the museum committtee members present at that time that we need to continue in the direction that was voted on, by pursuing the site at the former Oliver Factory. This is the direction that we will recommend to the HPOCA Board of Directors at the metting in Wentzville MO. 
   Two years from now, the possibilty of building near Copshaholm will still exist, but the opportunity to use the Forge#2 and Base Fit buildings will be gone forever, unless we do something now.

HPOCA President Terry Allen is in South Bend now gathering more information about the possible site near the Center for History. He should have more info for us soon.