South Bend is a m odel of change The oldest , most prestegious bank in Britian goes broke

Associated Press W rite r__________________ SOUTH BEND The dark industria l factories along the St. Joseph River that were once the hallmark of this c i ty ’ s d ow n tow n are gone. Gone, too, are the high-paying m anufacturing jobs at compa­ nies such as Studebaker and Bendix. Now the downtown is filled w ith men and w om en who dress in business su its and work in professional or serviceoriented companies housed in gleaming buildings o f steel and glass. Like many o ther c ities tha t once based th e ir fo rtunes on manufacturing. South Bend has had to adapt to the changing times. In the 1950s alone, the city lost about 50 m anufactur­ ing companies tha t employed 100 or more people. Studebaker, once the area’s largest employer w ith 25,000 workers, shut its doors in 1963. A ll that is left is a museum that houses a collection of the com­ pany’s cars. “ I don ’ t th in k th e re ’ s any question there’s been a change in the basic s tru c tu re o f the South Bend a re a ,” said Jon Hunt, director of the city ’s De­ p a rtm en t o f C om m unity and Economic Development. “ What we’re seeing is a flip from man­ ufacturing jobs into service-ori­ ented, professional businessoriented types of jobs.” In 1956, m anufacturing em­ ployees made up 57.8 percent of the workforce in South Bend. But by 1989, only 21.9 percent o f the workforce was engaged in manufacturing, and today it stands at 17.6 percent. “ M ore people w o rke d at Studebaker in its heyday than w ork in m anufacturing in the county today,” said John Peck, a professor of economics at In­ diana University-South Bend. “ We d idn ’t look a lo t like the United States 40 years ago, but we do much more today.” The decline of South Bend’s m anu fac tu ring indus try hap­ pened in a lm os t every c ity