“People often would ask you, ‘What’s your vision for Goshen?’ And I would always say that, ‘I hope that we’re always proud to call it home.’ Because if we like it, other people are going to see that and they’re going to like it, and they’re going to move here and see what it is that they were missing. So if we’re proud to call it home, that’s a good enough vision.“

Growing Up In Goshen When It Was A Sundown Community

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Phil: Allan Kauffman, thank you for joining us here for this oral history.

Allan: Appreciate the chance to be here.

Phil: And we welcome you to tell as much of your story as you would like to document through this process.

Allan: Okay.

Phil: We can start with your childhood.

Allan: Okay. Well, lots of times politicians like to say that, “I grew up in Goshen,” you know; “I’ve been a lifelong resident of Goshen.” But that’s not always an advantage, because you don’t bring any life experiences from other places that you’ve lived. But I am a lifelong resident of Goshen, and the longest time that I spent away from here was SST at Goshen College. But being here for all my life does give me perspective on the changes of the city since the 1950s until now, and it grew through all of those things. 

So, my childhood was in the fifties and sixties; I was born in 1949. I lived in the central part of the city, only a few blocks from my grade school, Chandler School, and only six blocks from the high school and junior high. So I was always able to walk to school. I went to Goshen College and was able to walk there if I wanted to, or ride my bike, the couple of years that I lived off campus. But usually I drove my car, and then a couple of years I lived on campus. So, I’ve been around a long time.

And watching Goshen grow through its diversity has really been interesting. Because in the fifties and sixties, we were all white and we didn’t think anything about it—why we were all white. I knew that Elkhart had a lot of African Americans and Gary, Indiana—

Whenever there was the Goshen Relays, there was flock of African Americans [that] came in for the track—and I never thought about the fact that they all left, you know, early in the evening, and we were all white again. I think when I was in high school we had one latino family. And we didn’t think of him as any different because maybe he was second or third generation here and spoke English and, you know, we were all white. And we didn’t talk about it; I didn’t hear my parents talk about it. And it was years and years later that I found out that we were one of the sundown communities in Indiana. And from what I’ve read, Indiana, I think, had more sundown communities than any other state in the country.

And for those who don’t know what a sundown community is, it’s a place where African Americans aren’t welcome after six o’clock in the evening and they needed to be out of town. In later years when I talked to some of my friends like Arvis Dawson, who went to Goshen College and lives in Elkhart—and he was a track guy, an athlete—and he said when they came over for the Goshen relays they knew that they needed to be out of town by evening. I had no idea that we were like that, and in later years Dan Shenk came up with a picture that was in the Goshen News where I was in a minstrel show when I was seven years old, I think. 

And it wasn’t an organ that I played, it was the accordion that I played. I wasn’t black-faced. My brother was in it—he was a couple of years older than me—and he sang a duet with an adult in town. I think the adult was black-faced but my brother wasn’t. The minstrel show was put on by the fraternal order of the police at the time, and I think 1956 was the last minstrel show in Goshen, and that was the only one that I was in. I didn’t know what a minstrel show was. You know, there were skits in it where they made fun of African Americans and I just didn’t think about that. And like I said, my parents never talked about it. 

So anyway, that’s kind of where we started, basically.

R. L. Polk Directory: “Goshen Was Low-Crime Because It Was White”

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Allan: And if you go back and look at an R. L. Polk directory in the 1950s—some people don’t know what that is, but it’s a book about a community that gives every address in town and who lived there and where they worked—so my dad lived at 809 South 8th Street and worked at Western Rubber—and you could look up by phone number, whose phone number belonged to who. 

So it was a lot of information. And in the front of those books was a demographics page that talked a little bit about the community—gave you some history, a profile about the community. And at the time, I think the early ones were written by mayors in a community, and later on it was adopted by the Chamber of Commerce. But in the mid 1950s—I think it was 1955—the statement—and this is pretty close to a quote—said, “Goshen is a low crime community largely because of the nature of its population, which is 97.5 percent native-born white, 2.5 percent foreign-born white, and there are no negros.” 

Now think about this statement, “We were low-crime because we were all white.” It’s a pretty prejudiced statement, when you look back on it. And I think the next year—like 1956—the “and there are no negros” was dropped. Like somebody realized that this is not the best thing to say. But it still said, “We’re low crime because we’re all white—either native-born or foreign-born.” 

And that same statement followed through the R. L. Polk directories all the way until the late 1970s. By 1977, I think it said that “We’re low crime because we’re 97.5 percent native-born white, 2 percent foreign-born white, and .5 percent other.” So we’re still low crime because we’re almost all white. And then by 1978 or so, the phrase—the whole thing got dropped. Like somebody finally realized that this wasn’t the best thing to say.

And in the late seventies we were growing in diversity. In the eighties we started growing a lot because of the number of jobs in the community. And it was a little bit difficult for the community to absorb the diversity, especially coming out of the past that we come out of, where we were pretty prejudiced, and a lot of us didn’t even know it at the time. So it’s ingrained in some people, and, you know, we’re not all the way over it today. We’ve still got people that would like to go back to the 1950s when we were all the same, but fortunately that’s a pretty small minority of the community, so that’s kind of the diversity that I grew up through.

Growing up in a Politically Active Family

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Phil: And I’m sure that’s a theme that will continue to come up in our conversations about your term as mayor and your ongoing involvement in the community. But going back to that childhood then, what were some of the other values that you absorbed? or that this community impressed on you? or that were characteristic of Goshen at the time?

Allan: Um. I didn’t think too much about what the community was shaping me as much as I did my family. I grew up in a politically active family. My dad was never elected to anything—except he was appointed to the school board, but he was never elected to anything. But it was back in the days when patronage was a big deal, and I remember him interviewing people in the living room. They had to get his blessing to get a job on the county highway department or the state highway department. And my mom was a precinct committee person, and my dad, before he was married, wrote a political column for the predecessor of the Goshen News, which was the News Democrat at the time. 

And he was progressive; he was a liberal. And so that was his bent that I grew up in. And the nut didn’t fall far from the tree; I grew up in that atmosphere and I stayed in that atmosphere. But the community, if you look at the community back then, it was a safe community—it was a safe community. Goshen was a good place to grow up, you know. 

Phil: So how did that translate into what you did apart from politics? Did you know you were going to be a politician?

Allan: [Laughs]

Phil: Or did you go down a career path that seemed like it might go a different direction?

Allan: Absolutely not. When I went to Goshen College, I majored in science—chemistry and biology—thinking that I’d go to medical school or dental school or whatever. And after graduation was accepted to dental school, and then decided I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to look in people’s mouths all my life. 

And so all the time during high school—middle of high school through college—I worked downtown for an office products company in the newsbook store. So I worked half-time in high school and college. And in the summers I would work in factories because I could make more money, and I built farm silos for a few years. But I always came back to the office products business. So when I decided I didn’t want to go on with science, I was in a—some people would say a rut—a comfortable groove in the office products business and just stayed there for 25 years.

The Start of a Political Career

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Allan: And the company grew to own three stores, and they were all in downtowns: Goshen, Warsaw, and Wabash. So I became kind of an advocate for downtowns and did that for 25 years, and during that time, got involved in politics. Now when I was in high school, I was a little bit active in Young Democrats with Mike Puro and some friends, but I never thought that I would be elected to anything—until 1975; Ron Hoke came to me—he and I grew up in the same church, Goshen City Church of the Brethren—and he said, “Would you be interested in running for City Council?”

I said, “No way. A Democrat can’t get elected in Goshen.” And he said, “No, no, here’s how.” And always before, city councilmen were elected citywide—all of them were. But they changed the format so that they were going to be elected by district. He said, “No, this is a district, and here are the numbers, and you’ve been active in the Chamber of Commerce and downtown, and if you go door to door and meet people, you can get elected.”

And I said, “You know Church of the Brethren people aren’t all that active in politics.” Well he talked me into it. He ran, and I ran, and I did get elected. And then in a rematch four years later got un-elected, and then moved to Third Street and ran for City Council at-large. 

And I just always enjoyed being involved with the community. You know, everybody talks about giving back to the community that gave you so much—and that’s part of it. It wasn’t a power thing; it wasn’t a prestige thing—I just enjoyed doing it. It was like being active in the Chamber of Commerce or whatever, so that’s how I got my start. And then I was elected four times at-large, and then I lost another election. And Mike Puro was the mayor at the time, and he appointed me to the board of works, and I did that for a year.

And he talked to me about, “Would I be interested in following him as mayor?” And he was starting his third term as mayor, and I said, “Oh Mike, by the time you’re done, Republicans are going to be so sick of Democrats that no Democrat could get elected.” And so I said no. And I was not a risk taker; I was comfortable in the office products business and continuing to do that. 

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, You know, maybe I would like to do that. But, you know, I had a young family and that would be a full-time job, and it was a little risky. And I said, “Well, you know Mike, if you ever for some reason left during your term and I was appointed and was the incumbent when I ran, I might think about it.” Well, and that gave him license to go look for something else, and he wanted to be the manager of the Indiana Toll Road, so he got appointed by Governor O’Bannon to do that. 

And I don’t think he would have ever left his job, if he had no idea who might follow him. It would either be me or somebody perceived to be better than me, and so, if it was going to be in those hands that he left the community, he felt okay about it. He never said it that way; I just interpreted it that way, that he would never have left it if just left chance who would be the mayor. And so I was appointed by precinct caucus, took office on April Fools Day in 1997, and then stayed and was elected four times. So yeah, that was my path.

Beginnings and Backlash to Diversity in Goshen

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Phil: So what was Goshen like at that point?

Allan: Well, you know, that was during the time where the diversity was growing fast. And towards the end of Mike’s second term, he recognized the tensions that were building in the community and was looking for a way to resolve those. And so he brought the Chamber of Commerce, and the Ministerial Association, and city government together, and together they appointed I think about 30 people to get on a task force to talk about, you know, How do we get past this? 

And I was one of the people that represented the City on the task force. Dave Boosvey(??) led the task force. He was a pastor in town at the time. And I remember thinking, This is not a big deal, you know, once our kids grow up together, we get through a generation, you know, we’ll all be over it; it’s us old people that have a problem with the diversity. But it just kept coming and it kept coming, and it was like the community just couldn’t adapt to it—t was coming so fast. 

So Mike formed the Human Relations Commission at the time—which was all volunteer; it wasn’t by ordinance; it was just a volunteer group. And it was a third appointed by the Chamber, a third by the Ministerial, and a third by the City. And so we worked at issues; we had community dialogues and different table-top discussions about—but it was mostly the choir that came to the discussions; it wasn’t the people that really had a problem with diversity, so we were just kind of all talking amongst ourselves. But Mike got that ball rolling, and that later became the Community Relations Commission, which was formed by ordinance, so it’s officially appointed now and covered by the news and everything. And it’s done various things over the time: study circles, and community dialogues, and all kinds of other things.

The Klan Comes to Goshen

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Allan: But towards the end of Mike’s term the Ku Klux Klan came to town. I say came to town—some of them live among us, you know, we found out. But at the time they were coming, Mike had the community plan an alternative event that people would go to at Shanklin Park instead of going to watch the Klan downtown. And so there were a lot of people that attended that and out of that grew Diversity Day in Goshen; so every year they celebrated the diversity of the community. And things like that started happening. And the Ku Klux Klan was a big deal in town at the time.

And then Mike left office, and soon after I got into office, the Klan came back. And that time we said, “Well, we’re going to start a pledge against prejudice and for every minute that you’re demonstrating in Goshen, we’re going to collect pledges, and we’re going to give half of it to the Human Relations Commission and half of it to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Well, the Klan hates the Southern Poverty Law Center, so I don’t remember how many thousand dollars we raised, but we split it between the two, and the Klan has not been back since then. I don’t know if it was that reason or just whatever.

But then, after that event we passed a no-mask ordinance in Goshen. And that was controversial at the time, and there were progressive people in Goshen that didn’t want to see it passed—not a lot of them—but there was talk in City Council meeting against the no-mask ordinance. And the Klan sat in the back row with robes and hoods on, and it was a tense meeting. And the rules of the council were always that you had to identify yourself if you wanted to speak, and so the head of the Klan wanted to speak, and I said, “Well, you have to take your hood off and give us your name.”

And he agreed to do that if the TV cameras didn’t train on him. So he came up, took his hood off, and gave his name. Our Police Chief was sitting in the back of the room and he’s going like this, you know [Allan shakes his head]. That wasn’t his name—he knew the guy— the guy was a local. And so I said, “Well, evidently that’s not your real name. What is it?” So he gave me a different name and went on to speak. 

But the most powerful testimony at that meeting was our African American postmaster, who, when he moved to Goshen, he said was not allowed to buy a home in Goshen. Between the realtors and the banks, he couldn’t get a mortgage inside the city, so he moved just outside the city. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that’s what he always said. But he stood there and he said, “You don’t know what it’s like to talk to somebody when you don’t know who your talking to, and it’s a whole lot different when you can see somebody’s eyes and talk to them, but this is a whole lot different.” 

So we had guidance from the Southern Poverty Law Center on how to fashion an ordinance that we thought would pass muster under the guise that, yeah, you have the right to say anything you want to, but not anonymously. Well, we got sued by the ACLU and we ended up losing that lawsuit. But it was interesting, during the deposition—I knew the attorney that was representing the ACLU through a friend of mine who grew up in Goshen too, Don Lumburgh(??), and he was friends with this person in Indianapolis, and so I knew from Don Lumburgh(??) that this fellow was Jewish, okay—and before the deposition starts I say, “Can I ask you a question?” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “How can you defend these people, because Jews are like number two on their list after African Americans.” And he said, “It’s all about the constitution.”

We lost that suit. You know, we spent about 50,000 dollars defending it, and the attorneys that worked with us said that they didn’t think it would do any good to appeal it to the next court because we’d probably lose there, too. So we spent some money—and 50,000 was no small sum of money at the time—but I think we did the right thing. You know, we made a statement about what the community feels. And it wasn’t the African Americans that [the Klan] was opposing; it was the Latinos that were moving into the community, and we were just not all white anymore. 

And the person that took his hood off worked for a local company, and he got fired. But I don’t know if that was the reason or if he just wasn’t a good employee or what. But it was a shock to a lot of people to find out that there are people in the Klan that live amongst us. And there was a lady that lived over on Tenth Street that sewed robes and hoods for the Klan all over the United States, and we didn’t know that at the time. So we were still growing through that, and that was a really big issue at the time that I took over.

Other Issues That Goshen Was Facing

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Allan: In addition, there were things that still needed to be updated. When Mike Puro became Mayor, he inherited a city that had not been well taken care of. There were a lot of streets that needed paved, and water and sewer departments were underdeveloped, and he spent a lot of money trying to catch up on that. And we were still in the catch up mode when I took over. And money was tight at the time, so finances were an issue; and diversity was an issue; and infrastructure was an issue; neighborhoods were an issue. And so we had an interesting start.

Phil: So, was there anything that transcended some of those differences at the time that stood out to you, that defined Goshen as being maybe more unified? 

Allan: Well, you know, I think one of the strengths of the community has been some of the social service agencies that we have and the diversity issues that they worked on. Goshen College has been a big influence. The Community Relations Commission guided us through an awful lot of stuff. So different organizations working together—still work together—on some of these issues.

We had a local group rise up called The Citizens for Immigration Law Enforcement who wanted to see all of the undocumented people leave the community. They wanted see us enforce federal immigration laws, which the Police Department didn’t want to do because we don’t have the manpower to do it. And the feds didn’t want local communities to be involved in those kinds of things. So that organization has gone away, but there’s still some of that sentiment in the community. But that’s transcended for a long time. It’s just getting to be lesser and lesser and lesser of a problem.

Passing the Sundown Town Resolution

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Phil: What did it mean then to arrive at the ordinance for the sundown town—or the sundown town resolution?

Allan: Okay.

Phil: Or were there other efforts like that that tried to address some of these past issues. 

Allan: No, there weren’t other efforts like that. Dan Shenk and Lee Roy Berry [Jr.] came up with the idea of acknowledging our past as a sundown community in a resolution—a council resolution. And at the time, they were talking about apologizing for the past, and some people in the community didn’t want to apologize because it wasn’t us that did it, it was our ancestors that did it—that created the sundown community. So they went through a lot of girations for the language in the resolutions, but finally ended up agreeing on the words—I can’t say it [exactly]—“It happened; it shouldn’t have; and it won’t happen again.” That’s about as close to an apology as you can get without saying I apologize. So, to my knowledge, were still the only community that has officially, by resolution, acknowledged their past as a sundown community. And so that has some significance.

Improving Goshen by Focusing on Neighborhoods

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Phil: What was the economic context when you took office, or through leading up to and during your term, how did that influence some of the dynamics within the community?

Allan: Things were pretty robust at the time. Goshen was growing, and we had good industry. It wasn’t until 2007 or so until we crashed, and the state imposed property-tax caps, and there was some other things that combined to make finances difficult. But things were pretty good.

Neighborhoods were an issue—declining neighborhoods—and when I became Mayor, we did a comprehensive plan. Cities are supposed to do that every ten years—they don’t always do that—but we did a new comprehensive plan. And often a city will hire an engineering plan to come in and do their comprehensive plan for them and lead community discussions and whatever. But that year we got a sustainability group—a local sustainability group—to do it, and so local people wrote the comprehensive plan. And it was neighborhood-focused, and under the theory that everybody deserves a decent neighborhood to live in. And you don’t want people to live in an area just because they can’t afford to move out of that area, so it tried to make that neighborhood good for them. 

And I remember at the time, there was a book written by Bill Hudnut, who was a Republican Mayor of Indianapolis. And I don’t remember the title of the book, but it was something like “The Rebirth of Cities”—or something like that. But I remember him saying that “Cities die from the inside and they’re reborn the same way.” And I thought of that similar to the life of a tree and how it would pertain to the city of Goshen. 

So if you looked at Goshen from 50,000 feet, it looked pretty healthy. You know, the suburbs were growing; the industry was good. But if you got down to street level, you started to see the decay. Well, it’s kind of like a tree. You know, you look at the crown of the tree and it’s green, and it’s growing, and it looks healthy—until a storm knocks it over, or you cut it down for a road project, and the center of it’s hollow. Well, it’s the same thing with cities. Unless you take care of that tree and nurture that tree of all of its life, it’s going to—well, all trees are going to die sometime—but it’s going to die prematurely. And so neighborhoods are the same way. If you don’t pay attention to them, they’ll deteriorate.

And so we started to focus on neighborhoods. And with Lacasa’s help—that’s a great organization in Goshen; without them we wouldn’t be what we are today—but with them we started to focus on one neighborhood at a time, you know. And they would concentrate their Help-a-House projects in the neighborhood that we were trying to do sidewalks, and streets, and whatever—water and sewer. And it took a lot longer to do than we wanted to—and we’re not done; the City’s not—I should say Jeremy’s not done—because it takes longer in a neighborhood than you thought it was going to, because you just don’t have enough money to fix everything. 

But if you don’t have decent sidewalks, and curbs, and streets, and water, and sewer, people aren’t going to take care of their houses either. You know, so that was the focus of the comprehensive plan: to work on neighborhood by neighborhood and try to get them up to snuff. And now, you know, central neighborhoods in Goshen, houses don’t stay for sale very long near downtown. That’s one of the issues with cities not very far away is that the downtown may be okay, but the neighborhoods surrounding it are not safe, and so that doesn’t give a safe feeling downtown. Well, we don’t have that here. And so largely it’s because the neighborhoods are fairly well kepped around downtown. 

Now you get out a little bit into the periphery, and some of them need more help and the City continues to work on those. But cities sprawl sometimes because inner-city neighborhoods start to deteriorate, so people move out further to get to the suburbs, and further and further. And we were trying to curtail that to some degree. Smart growth is not sprawl, you know; smart growth is trying to get people to live where services are and you don’t need so many miles of streets, and water, and sewer, and everything else. So you’ve got to take care of neighborhoods.

And so, ever since then, we’ve been focused on neighborhoods. And Jeremy continues to do that.

Downtown is the Face of the City

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Phil: So how did that focus on community development align with focus on economic development at the time? And how did those interests align with business interests?

Allan: When industry is looking at your community, they’re looking at a few specific things: one is the school corporation; one is neighborhoods; one is the hospital’ one is the downtown’ and there may be a fifth one that I’m not thinking of right now. But there are some basic elements that need to be there for industry to want to come. Because the industry could come, but if people don’t want to live in the community, there aren’t going to be any employees. So they kind of go hand-in-hand.

So industry was continuing to flourish, but we were concerned that we needed to continue to have a healthy downtown. They say that downtown is a first and lasting impression people have of your community. And so if somebody comes into the downtown—whether it’s somebody looking to establish a business, or whether it’s somebody looking to move, or just a tourist—if your downtown looks shabby, it sends a message that you don’t feel good about your town; and the opposite if you got a healthy downtown. And in my growing up, I saw the downtown—and I worked downtown for, like, 35 years or something, starting in high school—so I saw some of the transitions; I saw the years when there was a lot of vacancies, and the years it was full.

And about the time the box stores started coming, we were still pretty full at the time, but you were reading about other communities where Walmart had come to town and the small mom and pop businesses went out, and there was a lot of vacancies, and the grocery store went out. And we didn’t want that to happen to Goshen.

And so—I was still on City Council at the time, and in my council mailbox I got a flyer about the National League of Cities and a conference they were having in Minnesota or Wisconsin or somewhere like that. And one of the workshops was the National League of Cities and main street—the National Main Street [Center] program under the Historic Trust—and it talked about vital downtowns. [I thought] This looks interesting, but I couldn’t leave work to go to Minnesota. So I went around to the banks and collected some money to send four businesspeople to fly up there. And Randy Sharky(??) flew them up in his plane, and they came back all excited about this Main Street Program.

And so, we got involved in that and called it The Face of the City at the time because downtown is the face of the city. And the theory is that downtown belongs to everybody; it’s not just the businesses that are downtown. But because of its impact on the whole city, it belongs to all of us. So, we were going around to industrialists asking for money to fund this Main Street Program. And John Gimmer(??), who was the publisher of the Goshen News at the time, and I were calling on Bill Johnson from Goshen Rubber and saying, “You know Bill, we’re all in this together, and you have an interest in downtown because your employees care about what the town looks like.” And he said, “Well, I get what you’re talking about, but what’s downtown doing for itself?” And John and I looked at each other, “That’s a good question.”

Because whenever we wanted to do an improvement project—whether it was buy Christmas decorations or do angle parking or whatever—we had to go around hat in hand and ask people for donations. And the generous ones would give, and the pikers would kind of ride along on the backs of the generous ones. And how much money you collected depended on how good your sales pitch was; what the project was; whether the merchant had a good week the week before, or got up on the wrong side of the bed. So some of them were good, and some of them weren’t.

And so, then I started reading about economic improvement districts, or business improvement districts. Kendallville had one at the time, and Ft. Wayne had one. And it’s kind of like a neighborhood association where you self-assess dues. You define the area. And you have to have over 50 percent cooperation from the owners—and I think at the time it was 75 percent of the assessed value in the area. So we were able to establish that and established taxes—or fees, or whatever—on the building owners. And so we were able to collect money that way. So then we could go to people and say, “Well, you know, we are all pitching in. We’re pitching in our money too, in the form of dues or taxes.” 

And so the Business Improvement District and the Mainstreet Association—those things helped keep our downtown healthy, you know, so we didn’t have the vacancies. And then along came everything else; along came Dave Pottinger and all of the things that happened along the way.

A Series of Successes and Redevelopment Projects

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Allan: And if I can pick a starting point, we had a relatively healthy downtown, but the Chamber of Commerce at the time was having leadership academies every year. And one year Gordon Lorde(??) was the head of it, and they decided they wanted to move the junkyard off of Lincoln Avenue. And it was an eye-sore, and if you haven’t lived here for a lot of years you don’t appreciate it, but their trash trucks were backing out into Lincoln Avenue and holding up traffic. And it looked ratty, and nobody wanted to develop around there. And their goal was to move the trash—the dump—off of Lincoln Avenue. And they got it accomplished; they got land rezoned on Logan Street and moved it to where OmniSource is now—a recycling facility; got that off of Lincoln avenue.

And at the time—we didn’t know it—but Farm Bureau which is now Interra Credit Union, was looking at establishing a new corporate office. And they were not looking downtown; they were looking outside the downtown somewhere. But when they saw that cleaned up, then they bought the old feed mill, knocked it down, and built what’s now Interra Credit Union. 

And because of that—you know we had heard about Tax Increment Finance districts, and those are districts where whatever development happens within the boundary, you can use the property taxes generated for improvements within—otherwise the taxes are spread out over the whole community—and it’s no new money for the community; it just makes the overall property taxes go down a little bit, because the overall levy is controlled, so you don’t get any value out of the new development. So we were able to capture that and started to do things along the millrace, and so, then got involved with brownfield stuff and moved the Street Department out of there, and cleaned up the millrace to where, you know, the Hawks building was the last factory building left on the millrace. And Lacasa took that project on, and has made a nice facility there. 

So there’s just a lot that happened; somebody starts a ball rolling and somebody just has to keep it rolling. And I was just fortunate to be in the Mayor’s Office when all of that stuff was happening and could kind of push some things along, but it wasn’t all me. 

And Peter Kageyama wrote a couple of books that I was interested in, one was called “For the Love of Cities” and another one was “Love the Place You Live.” He talks about co-creators, people that will take something—he talks about a stage—and they will build onto the stage; and then somebody will build onto that stage. 

And so, I saw that happening in Goshen organically. And I don’t think Dave Pottinger would’ve ever invested in downtown Goshen—the old lumber yard was the first thing—I don’t think he would’ve ever started that if he didn’t see some other things positive that were happening. So, he thought it would be a good place to invest his time and money, and he did that. And then entrepreneurs came along and saw what he was doing and said, Hey, this would be a pretty cool place to start my business.

The Common Good and “The Good of Goshen”

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Allan: And so, they’re doing that, and people like Gina Leichty and Ben Stutzman and all these artistic and creative types came together to create Good of Goshen with the Chamber of Commerce, and the City, and the Schools, and the College—I think those were the four participants.

We did a branding study for Goshen. And a branding study isn’t, you know, what we want to be—and come up with some saying for that; it’s what you are, and how you are identified. And so, it was out of that, that Good of Goshen came about. Gina and Ben and some of their friends created Good of Goshen and came up with a wonderful tagline—or wonderful branding statement—and I have it here that I’ll read. I can pull it up. It’s kind of long, and sometimes I cannot—I’ve read this at some State of the City addresses, and I can’t hardly read it without getting a little bit teary eyed. 

“Everything comes together in Goshen…or more precisely, everybody. There’s a special spirit that has always been here and it’s wonderfully contagious. You’ll see it all over town, from neighbors who help the new family on the block get moved in, to volunteers who help at a school.  People here are committed to working for the common good, which has helped make Goshen an uncommonly great place to live, work and visit. We’re a richly diverse community of folks, making this a place where you’re as likely to live near young professionals as retirees, and as apt to meet friends at First Fridays as at a concert…at the college or just strolling downtown. But what we share in common is the community ideal. Together, we’ve worked to make Goshen a place where business is good, manufacturing thrives, downtown bustles, artists create, entrepreneurs reach global markets, families find a friendly environment, good things take root, and people pitch in to make it better. It’s altogether different because we’re all in it together. Some say Goshen is the way America used to be. We say it’s the way to an uncommonly robust future.”

And out of that came the tagline: common good, uncommonly great.  And the people that did this branding study were out of Tennessee, and they said that it was uncommon to find a community where there are so many people working together for the common good—not for self recognition, but just to make things better. Now, you know, were they just blowing smoke or was that really true? I want to believe it’s really true. It’s a great community, and so many things that have happened in Goshen have been because somebody else started something.

Mike Puro’s Impact

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Allan: When Mike Puro was mayor he adopted a mission statement that thrives to this day—it’s never been changed. And I can’t quote it, but I can kind of paraphrase what it says. It kind of says that when you’re elected or appointed to office, none of us know how long we’re going to be there. And so our task it to take what was given to us and to make it better for the next set of people. And Mike passed a pretty good community—it had its challenges, but Mike took a community, and he made it a whole lot better, and he passed it to me, and I hope that I made it better. I passed it to Jeremy, and now he’s making it better. So it’s a stewardship mission statement; you know, you take what you have and you try to make it better—you don’t just be a caretaker; you try to improve it. So that’s what we tried to do. 

And I was fortunate that Mike had some really good department heads that I inherited. Some of them retired and were replaced, and we were fortunate to find good ones to follow. We’ve always had great employees that bought into that mission. They didn’t have to be browbeat to do their job. And I was never a micro-manager, you know. I tried to find the resources for them to do their job and then get out of the way unless they were headed off in the wrong direction. But most of the time they were headed in the right direction. 

Bob McCoy(??) was a great director of public works, but he was a really hard charger, and sometimes he’d get out in front of stuff that I wasn’t ready for. Woah, woah—but it’s better to rein in the horse than have to beat the horse to do their job. So Bob was a great person for the City. But we’ve had other—still have other great ones. So, make it better.

Rewards and Challenges of Being Ahead of the Curve

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Phil: So, Goshen does seem to be acknowledged as a leading community in a lot of ways, or sometimes being ahead of the curve. What has that meant to you? To see the role of—through your role as mayor—just the role of being a leader within the community and for the community itself to be a leader?

Allan: Um. It’s nice to be recognized as a community that’s ahead of the curve. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to bring the community along with you when you’re trying to do something. 

You know, we had significant issues with stormwater management and the EPA saying, You’ve got to clean up your rivers. The solution—they used to say, The solution to pollution was dilution, so just get the poop into the river and let it wash away. And in the 1970s we still had homes that were straight-piped to the river, and so we had to clean that up. And we were one of the first communities—and EPA left it up to states to create their own standards, and Indiana created the most stringent standards of any state. And we had, like, the second most combined sewer overflows of any state in the United States, and so we had significant issues to overcome. 

But we took it seriously, and we got a plan developed and we built the detention facility, and pretty much eliminated all except some really, really, really big rainfalls—we eliminated that from the river. And so, we were one of the first communities in Indiana to complete the plan. There are still other communities that are still planning on how they’re going to do it, and it’s millions and millions and millions of dollars. So at the time, that was the biggest infrastructure project we’d ever had in Goshen. It was like 35 million dollars, but that was ahead of the curve.

You know, years ago, we did an open container law that was ahead of the curve. And other cities started to do that, and the state finally had to do something too; you never knew when you were driving into a community that was an open container community or not. And so there have been some other things. 

There are some things that tried to do that we failed on, you know. We tried to put four words into the civil rights ordinance: sexual preference and gender identity. And that was hugely controversial at the time, and didn’t get it done. It was politically divided at the time, the Democrats were in favor and the Republicans weren’t. It started out, one of the Republicans was a co-sponsor, but flipped because it was so controversial. But we filled up the high school auditorium with people that were there to speak. And when you look back on the minutes, most of the people who live in Goshen spoke in favor of amending the ordinance, and the people who lived outside the city, the majority were against. And they brought in an attorney from Phoenix and they brought busloads of people in, and you know, the red herring was the bathroom issue. You know, these people are going to attacking our women. Well, you know, we tried say, “You know, if that was going to happen it would already be happening.” But we just couldn’t beat it down.

So somethings you try to do—the no-mask ordinance was ahead of the curve, and it got beaten down. So, you know, there are some other issues that we can work on.

Drivers Licenses for Undocumented People

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Allan: One that I would like to see the community work on is drivers licenses for undocumented people. We tried that one time. Senator Marvin Riegsecker was our state senator at the time, and he was in favor of it, and he was well-respected in the legislature. So, you know, we tried to work it through him, but he ran into a brick wall in Indianapolis. And so, I think that that’s still an issue that if cities combined and if police chiefs combined, there could be enough momentum to get the state legislature to do something. 

There’s all kinds of reasons to do it. I mean, people are going to drive. And our police department doesn’t want people to get into accidents and run from the scene, or drive without having learned the rules of the road or anything—drive without insurance. And you know they’re going to drive to school, or to work, or to the grocery store. And so, let them live their lives out of the closet basically. Yeah, they’re here undocumented, but they’re here and they’re part of the economy and—Illinois allows drivers licenses and Michigan is considering it. If everybody around us does it, and Indiana doesn’t, if you’re a latino and you were here undocumented, would you want to live where you could live your life openly, or would you want to be in the closet and drive illegally all the time? So, I think there are enough police chiefs around the state that would be in favor of this. Our police chief, I think, would be. And it’s just a matter of the police chiefs, and the mayors, and the insurance companies getting together and pushing the state legislature to do something. So, maybe that’s ahead of the curve, if Goshen passes a resolution. I don’t know if the City Council would do that or not; I never tried that through a resolution.

Yeah, it’s kind of fun to be ahead of the curve sometimes, but it’s kind of hard sometimes to drag the community along with you.

Partnerships Have Made Goshen What It Is

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Phil: So, going back to the branding statement, and just this characterization of the common good as a distinguishing aspect of Goshen, did you use that as a way of framing or approaching some of these issues that may have been more controversial, or people may not have been as united around in the past? 

Allan: I don’t remember using it. I mean, we concentrated on that branding statement for a while. We had it on the website. It’s still on the website—the City’s website. But we used the logo and we tried to tie some things together in the community. And it’s not like we had to start doing something we weren’t already doing, because the branding statement recognized that we were doing it.

We’ve always worked well with the Chamber of Commerce, which is not real common—for city government and Chamber of Commerce to get along. But ever since Mike Puro was the mayor, and maybe before that, I don’t know—I wasn’t aware at the time. But we’ve had a good relationship with the business community. There are tensions sometimes, you know. We have to enforce the storm water regulations pretty stringently to—we have a lot of flooding issues in Goshen because of the sins of the past, where we’ve allowed development to happen in wetlands, and so it pushes the water somewhere else. Well, we don’t want to keep making it worse for the next generations. And so, we’re pretty intentional about that. And that makes it a little more difficult sometimes for industry to develop in Goshen, because they’ve got to create stormwater retention, and other communities might not be enforcing it quite as much as Goshen. So, sometimes the business community and city government can be at odds on some of that stuff, but most of the time, we’re working together. 

And, one of the big issues that we needed the Chamber’s support for was when we were going through this neighborhood focus. And for a long time the City has had rental inspection to make sure that rental units are safe. That doesn’t mean they have to pretty, you know—the furnace has to work and the water heater and whatever, but the shutters could be hanging and the house could need painting. So some of the properties didn’t look very good, and so we were trying to work on that. So we worked on a neighborhood preservation ordinance, which also spoke to the appearance of the property. And that was a big issue, especially to conservative folks who feel like, My home is my castle; you can’t tell me what to do with my home. 

And most of those people were taking care of their homes anyway, you know—it wasn’t going to affect them. But they said, You know, if we have a little bit of peeling paint, you’re going to make my trim? Well, no, no, you know, it’s going after the worst of the problems.

So they wanted it to apply only to rental properties, and we said, Well, that’s not legal, it’s got to apply to homeowners too. And there was a lot of opposition to that. But the Chamber joined us, you know, with the theory that neighborhoods have to look good for industry to want to come and people to want to live here. 

And so, we were able to overcome that. My son likes to say, “Your right to do anything with your fist ends at my nose.” And so, we were using that argument to say, “The right for you to do anything with your property ends where you devalue your neighbor’s property.” And so, with the Chamber’s support, we were able to get that passed, and that’s been a big help over the years in Goshen. 

Some of that common good—working with the School Corporation, or the Chamber of Commerce, or social service agencies, or whatever, you know, it’s partnerships that have made the community what it’s been. It hasn’t been the mayors; it’s been whose been around the mayors. And you can kind of try to set a direction and then hope people go in that direction, and given the resources to do their jobs and try to make the place a better place.

Legacy and Leaving Something Better Than You Found It

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Phil: You’ve referenced that as part of—in Mike Puro’s mission statement—leaving the place better than you found it, and that being maybe the best legacy you could look for. Are there other—

Allan:—Well, late in my time as the mayor, a Goshen News reporter came to me and asked me what I want my legacy to be. And I said, “Legacy? I don’t think about a legacy. I don’t need a street named after me or a building named after me.” And she said, “Well, what do you want people to say about you when you’re gone?” I said, “Well, if they say, He left it better than he found it, that’s good enough for me.” 

And so later, when Jeremy had that park named after me, you know, I was floored by it at the time, you know; I was honored to have the thing named after me. But I had just said, “I don’t need something named after me,” you know. And there are other people that have done bigger things in this community than Allan Kauffman has done. And you know, I asked him if he would take that name off of the park. And he wasn’t ready to do that because he worked hard to get it approved (laughs), and so it’s still there. I may still convince somebody to change the name to something else.

And then he created the Allan J. Kauffman Good of Goshen Award, and I was the first one he gave it to. And I said, “You know, could you just take my name—just say Good of Goshen. You don’t have too—you gave it to me—that’s like really, really cool—but you don’t have to name it after me. And you don’t have to name the park after me.” So I’m still working on those issues. I just don’t need something named after me. Now, the people that do it, want to do it—think you ought to be recognized. But I think of so many community fathers and mothers that have made Goshen what it is, and my role in that seems like it’s been really pretty small, to me.

Seeing Goshen with Fresh Eyes

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Phil: Well, you’ve had such a unique perspective of having lived here pretty much all of your life. I mean, you said you left for SST. That was the only time you haven’t lived here?

Allan: Yeah, yep, pretty much—summer camp; Boy Scout camp.

Phil: Where did you go for SST?

Allan: I went to Guadeloupe—French speaking island in the Carribean. Kind of a nice place to go, but at the time I didn’t like it because I had a girlfriend in Goshen and we were separated. But it was a good experience looking back on it. 

Phil: Did you see Goshen any differently when you did come back?

Allan: Well, maybe I appreciated it more. And that’s one of the things about growing up in Goshen, and people saying, I’m a lifelong resident. You don’t have the appreciation for your community, because you haven’t experienced someplace where it’s not as good as it is in Goshen. And so many people are coming back to Goshen. And when I was mayor, Goshen College would invite me to come out and talk to new students, and I would always say to them, “We need you to be stewards of this community because you may think you’re going to leave here, and then you’ll end up here. You know, we’ve got doctors and lawyers and teachers and nurses and everybody that’s a Goshen College graduate. Some of them have moved away and come back. Some of them stayed here. So, you might think you’re only going to be here four years, but you might just be here forever, and we want you to care about the community.”

And so, it’s been fun to watch—especially to watch people come back to Goshen. Mike Puro has a son who says that Goshen has everything that Seattle has—you know, the unique coffee shop and all these things—it’s just that Goshen only has one of them, whereas Seattle has a whole bunch of them. So, you know, we’re a small cosmopolitan area, you know; local breweries, and wow, this community is a whole lot different than when I grew up in it. And it’s really cool to see.

Embracing Diversity of All Kinds

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Allan: Richard Florida talks about the creative class, and that if you want creative people that are going to fill good-paying jobs to live in your community, you sometimes have to accept different lifestyles. And young people are looking for the place they want to live and then finding a job more than they are finding a job and then moving to a place. 

And so, I remember at the time, Everett Thomas brought a chapter in from the book that talked about accepting different lifestyles. And one of the councilmen—I won’t name him—said, “Well, we don’t need more orange-haired homosexuals in town.” And I was sitting next to a Goshen News reporter, and I said, “Are you going to put that in the paper?” And she said, “Yeah.” And she did. You had to read through the whole article to get to it, but “We don’t need any more orange-haired homosexuals in town.” Well, you know, it’s part of life. You got to be accepting of diversity. 

Phil: But what’s the counter story to that? Because not everybody embraces that yet here in Goshen. What is the—

Allan:—No, no, but—you know, when we went—twice. we tried to put those four words in the ordinance to—and it’s for protection for employment and housing—and twice we didn’t get it done. But, just like the no-mask ordinance that got defeated in the end, it sent a message that the community was a lot more open than what people thought it would be.And at the time that it failed, one of the people that was really promoting it in Goshen came to me and said, “You know, it might be better that it failed than passed, because if it had passed, the community would have been bitterly divided between the people who didn’t want it and the people who did. And just going through the exercise and hearing people in Goshen speak favorably about it, and accepting of us, sent a message that we appreciate.” 

And so, I think even though it’s not in there yet—and I think maybe someday it will be—the future bends towards justice, I guess—they feel better about living in Goshen. You know, people put the rainbow emblem in their stores, and fly the flag, and send the message that we’re accepting. And, you know, people put the yard signs in their yards that say we’re accepting of people from other countries and diversity. And so I think part of our vibrancy is our diversity. And while there are still some people that wish for a different—I mean wish for the past—I think we’re in a much better place than we were when we didn’t know we were all white. Or we didn’t think about it.

The Goshen High School Redskin Controversy

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Phil: So, you went to Goshen high school? You were a Redskin?

Allan: I was a Redskin, and we didn’t think about it being a negative thing at the time, but I didn’t have a problem when they changed it to RedHawks. But you know, we’ve still got people that wear t-shirts that say “Redskins forever.” And, you know, I get it, you know. I was never a sports guy—maybe if I had been on a sports team, I’d have felt differently about it. But I was a music guy all my life, you know. I started out playing the piano and then switched to the accordion and played the violin, and the cello, and the clarinet, the trumpet. The only thing I have left now is one accordion. But I was always in the band, and science club, and math club, and French club and stuff like that. I was never an athlete—although the football coach tried to recruit me because I was one of the bigger kids; at 175 pounds I was one of the bigger kids, and if we had a 200 pound lineman that was a big lineman. Now 300 pounds is not uncommon. So, I was just—I like playing sports—intramurals and stuff like that—but I was just never attracted to more than that. 

Phil: Was there anything, though, from that reaction to the mascot transition that you could particularly empathize with as far as part of how that reflected the identity that people felt who also had lived in Goshen all their lives, or who have a deeper—or more historic—connection to Goshen, than people that have been attracted here as the creative class, so to speak?

Allan: It was some of the same kind of arguments—that people had lived there for so long that they were attached to it. They didn’t recognize the inference of the word redskin because, you know, we’d always been Redskins, and you didn’t feel negatively towards Indians. And they just never thought about the term redskin was a racist kind of comment. And they weren’t going to accept it, and by gosh, We’re Redskins, but we’re not racists! and so that was their attitude. 

You know, I applaud the people that really pushed that issue to where the School Corporation changed. And it was a big move for the School Corporation to do what they did. But part of that is the more progressive attitude that we’ve got in Goshen than we used to have. And I think some of that is the influence of Goshen College, and Anabaptism, and Mennonites, and Church of the Bretheren—not that the other religions aren’t that way, but there’s a pretty big progressive influence in the community from some of the churches. And Goshen College graduates with the philosophy that they graduate with, have gotten into administration in the School Corporation and different places—Oaklawn, and Everence, and some different organizations in the community—and brought that common good kind of feeling along with them. So while the Redskin thing was controversial, it was a good exercise to go through—bitter for some people, and good for others. So, I don’t know.

Choosing to Call Goshen Home

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Phil: So you chose to go to Goshen College; why? Was it to stay in Goshen or was it for—

Allan:—It wasn’t to stay in Goshen. It was—for me, I’m Church of the Brethren, so my closest church college would’ve been Manchester College. So for me, it was a choice between Manchester and Goshen. Goshen, because it would be less expensive for me to go there and live at home. And I didn’t get family money to go to Goshen College; I had to earn my way through. 

And so, I lived at home my freshman year and had friends on campus and realized pretty quickly how much of college you miss when you don’t live on campus. And so my sophomore year I lived on campus. Then I ran out of money again and lived at home my junior year, and back on campus my senior year. So it was economic for me at the time. They were both good science schools at the time, and that’s what I was looking at. I had friends that came to Goshen College; I didn’t have a lot of friends that went to Manchester, but it would’ve been my church school. I didn’t look at big places like IU. I didn’t even apply at large schools. Those were the only two that I applied to. 

Phil: Did you ever have a desire to get further away from Goshen after having gone away for SST? I mean, did you ever consider moving anywhere else or living anywhere else?

Allan: You know, I never really have. Carol and I have talked about it. But I told her when I was done being mayor she could move me anywhere she wanted to, but she’s developed friendships in Goshen, too, that she doesn’t want to leave. And so, we don’t want to move to Florida. If we moved somewhere, it might be to Virginia or somewhere where her sister is, but we don’t seriously talk about leaving Goshen.

Phil: So you continue to call it home, here.

Allan: Oh yeah, and that reminds me, people often would ask you, What’s your vision for Goshen? And I would always say—you know, it sounds so trite—but I said that “I hope that we’re always proud to call it home.” Because if we like it, other people are going to see that, and they’re going to like it, and they’re going to move here and see what it is that they were missing. So if we’re proud to call it home, that’s a good enough vision.

Trail and Brownfield Development

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Allan: You just keep working at things like parks and trails. 

Which reminds me again—if I can go back to Mike Puro—he started the whole trail thing going. He had a vision for a system that would connect parks and schools and downtown and the different elements in Goshen. He had a vision for a plan, but no money to build it—no money even to do the plan. So he went to Bill Johnson and asked for 25 or 35 thousand dollars to hire a consultant to do a plan. And Bill Johnson gave Mike the money. And so he designed a plan with no money to build a trail. And the first trail he built was with local funds, and it went from the Plymouth Avenue bridge to the middle school, and it was because kids were walking and riding their bikes in the road, at the time, to get to school. And the School Corporation didn’t want the path, because they didn’t want more kids riding their bikes. But he was a little stubborn, and so he built that path with local funds—didn’t cost a lot of money—and people saw that it was popular. 

And then about that time came along the federal TEA-21 alternate transportation program, and we were like the only community that had a plan ready to build. And so we got one of the first grants—80 percent grant—and he built the Central City Trail and the Millrace Trail. And then the federal government saw what a nice job Goshen had done with that, so the next grant was easier to get; and the next one easier. 

It was the same with brownfield development. People saw that Goshen did a good job with the first one, so it was easier to get the second one. Becky Hutsell is the Brownfield Coordinator; she built a fantastic relationship with the Chicago Region. So Goshen, because they did good things with the money, got more things.

And that was controversial too. We had people in Goshen that didn’t think we shouldn’t accept federal funds because, you know, if you just stop spending federal money, the federal government will stop spending money. Well, it doesn’t work that way. The money would go to Elkhart, or South Bend, or somewhere else. And I always felt like it was my job, if the federal government had the tap flowing, we put our cup under the water and get what we can. And that’s why we have the parks, and the trails, and brownfield cleanups, and so many things in Goshen—it’s because we fought against that feeling that we shouldn’t take federal funds.

Coming Together in a Divisive Political Time

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Allan: We had to fight some political battles. We wouldn’t have the Plymouth Avenue underpass if it hadn’t been for getting one republican to support the project and that was Chip Lantz(??), because he lived on Plymouth Avenue and he saw the problem. Sometimes you have to drag people along until they catch onto the vision. And I think that our republicans are more progressive now than they were years ago, but it’s kind of an organic growth. 

Phil: So with the arc you referenced, are people coming together more? There’s also the narrative of polarization and people becoming more separated?

Allan: Well, the national situation hasn’t helped the local situation, sometimes, when it comes to things like immigration. But I think by in large, we still come together more than we separate. I think that people who don’t accept the diversity are pretty quiet about it. If you read in the Goshen News and see their weekly polls and some of the questions they ask, you can see the negative side of Goshen answering those polls. And I always think that the polling results are more negative than the reality is in Goshen, because it’s just those people that feel—people that are satisfied with the status-quo don’t go vote as much as they should; people that are upset with something, they’ll go vote or they’ll answer a poll or whatever. But if things are flowing along pretty well, you just don’t hear about it. And so, we always, kind of, accepted silence as acceptance of what’s going on. But I think there’s more coming together than there is separation.

Being Proud of Goshen

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Phil: You referenced feeling at home being aligned with feeling proud of where you live and where you come from. Is there anything that you think that still brings people together as far as a pride of place?

Allan: Um, that’s an interesting way to ask the question. I think maybe I’d answer the question by saying, It’s the pride of place that brings us together. You know, we don’t want to see what we have deteriorate. And I think that’s one of the reasons that young people have gotten much more active in the community. They—within the last ten years or whatever, they saw some negative things happening at the state level and the national level that they didn’t want to see happen in Goshen. And so the younger generation has gotten more active in voting than they used to be. They’re a more significant part of Goshen. But yeah, I think it’s having what we have, and not wanting it to go away, that brings us together.

Goshen Has It Pretty Good

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Phil: Do you remember for yourself growing up, when you first would’ve first recognized some pride of this place? Of being proud of Goshen?

Allan: You know, I just never thought about it that way. It was what we had, and I didn’t have anything to compare it to. And so, it was just—this is the way it’s supposed to be. I guess I didn’t really start to understand it until I was maybe in college and saw some things from a different perspective, and things aren’t the way they are in Goshen everywhere. And certainly when I became mayor, and I was around mayors from other cities and saw other cities’ problems, I thought, Wow, we got it pretty good.

Carol and I would go out to eat sometimes in Elkhart—and they went through some tough times, and they didn’t like their mayor all that well—and they said, We wish you were the mayor of Elkhart. And I was like, “I wouldn’t want to be the mayor of Elkhart. I like being the mayor of Goshen; it’s manageable.”

Some places have so many issues to deal with that I don’t understand how people can go to bed at night and get up in the morning and go back to work and fight the issues that they’ve got. God bless them for doing it—somebody needs to do it. But I was just glad that we had a community that was so supportive that the mayor’s job was pretty easy in Goshen. I always tell people that I felt lucky to come along when I was; and lucky there were people like Dave Pottinger; and Gina Liechty and all that generation; and that we had the Lacasa’s that we had.

We had a downtown study done one time—a Hyett Palma study. They identified things that we needed to work on in the downtown. And it wasn’t called a plan; it was called an Action Agenda—here’s the things that you need to do. And two things they identified—they said, We got all these ideas—We do not have a clue what you’re going to do with the Shoots Building and the old Lincoln Hotel. Along comes Lacasa and takes those projects on. And without a Lacasa, those places might have fallen down by now, I don’t know. And without a Lacasa, the Hawks Building wouldn’t have happened. They’ve taken on some huge things. And just their everyday neighborhood preservation stuff. You fix up the worst house in the neighborhood, and the second worst house doesn’t want to be the worst house, so they fix their house up, and it kind of rolls. I think they’ve got a really great reputation in the state of Indiana for a community development organization.

So, you know, we have Greencroft and all of that talent that volunteers in the schools. You know, people complain sometimes that they don’t have to pay property taxes. But the other resources that they bring—the wealth that they bring to the community, and the volunteerism, and the talents that they bring—other cities would say to me, I wish we had a Greencroft. Sorry, you can’t have ours. You can’t have our Gina Liechty; you can’t have our Dave Pottinger; you just leave those people alone. (Laughs) You can’t have our Lacasa.

So, you know, it’s a great community. And I always referred to those social service agencies as the thread—I look at Goshen as a quilt—and those are the threads that hold all the quilt pieces together. 

It’s a great place.

Phil: And we briefly talked about leadership, but then we’ve also talked about cooperation, and how these groups are supporting what’s already in place, and supporting each other is a big part of what makes Goshen special or unique as well.

Allan: Absolutely, absolutely. And then when an organization like the Ku Klux Klan, or Citizens for Immigration Law Enforcement, or whatever—or somebody comes to town and wants to build a detention facility on the outskirts of Goshen—those things come along and the community rises up and expresses its opinion, and it beats those things back, basically. So yeah, we’ve got some divisions, but I think that the people on the (air quotes) good side overcome the people on the not-so-good side. 

I understand the points of view on the other side, but I don’t always agree with them.

The Personal Challenges of Being a Mayor

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Phil: Is there anything from your personal history, things that are more personal to you that speak to Goshen, but also just to your own development, that other people would appreciate, as a better awareness of yourself?

Allan: How I felt about the community—my wife would always say that I took my job too personally, and when something bad would happen to Goshen I would go into a funk. And looking back on it, I can see where she was right, sometimes. When the state passed property tax caps, and it adversely affected Goshen and Goshen Schools, I guess I did take personally. When you hurt my city—our city—I guess I did, you know.

Carol said, “The city isn’t your city; you’re not responsible for all of the stuff that happens.” But I still took some things personally. When the civil rights ordinance didn’t pass, I took that personally. There are some things that I would have liked to have accomplished and not left as a problem for Jeremy to deal with. But in that kind of job, you never get everything done that you want to get done; there’s always something that’s ongoing, and some issue that you left for your successor.

So, as I look back on the job, it was time for me—after almost 19 years—it was time for somebody like Jeremy to come along. I could see that things that didn’t bother me earlier in the tenure started to bother me more. Mike Puro used to refer to it as removing the bark from the tree, and the things that didn’t damage the tree before started to damage it. And it affected him quicker than it affected me, but I can see that it did affect me.

The Third Street Project

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Allan: The Third Street project was a tough one for me. I could’ve walked away from that pretty quickly because of the amount of opposition. But other people around me like Bob McCoy(??) and other people that wanted to see some improvements—there was too much traffic on Main Street for people to be outside and have a conversation and whatever. And so we went to Dowagiac, Michigan, who had moved their state highway off of their Main Street over a couple of blocks and diverted the truck traffic and the heavy traffic. And their downtown was 75 percent vacant when they did that, and within a couple of years it was all filled up again. 

And so, the value of fighting the battle looked to be worth it. And we had the Old Town Neighborhood that didn’t want it to happen, and there were some negative things about the project at the time that we were able to finally negotiate with INDOT. 

In 1997 I came into office, and one of the first things that I got hit with—other than the Ku Klux Klan and a windstorm—was that INDOT wanted to build this project through Goshen and had had it on the books—I don’t know—for some years before 1997. So they were going to build a boulevard, or a wide street, down through the middle of the Historic District, and that wasn’t too acceptable. So we kept talking to them about some other route. You know, the north connector road that was built actually came out of a comprehensive plan in, I think, 1973, when Troyer Associates did the plan for Goshen, and they came up with this idea. We kind of pulled it off the shelf and said, we’re not going to get a bypass all the way around Goshen, but let’s try to get the heaviest traffic out of downtown.

So we fought through; and it got delayed; and we spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars on that, just defending the project in court; and finally got approval to do it. And we were attacked because people thought we were avoiding the federal process. And we hadn’t used any federal funds, so we didn’t have to go through the federal process. 

So we had an injunction; we couldn’t change US 33 for a number of years. And now we’re past that time, so we can take Main Street and do what the community wants to do with Main Street. Not everybody wants angled parking, but evidently that’s the decision that was made, so they’re going to try it and see how it works, I guess.

So some battle are controversial, and you just feel like giving up sometimes, but the end is worth the fight.

The Windstorm That Came through Goshen

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Phil: You referenced the windstorm.

Allan: Oh. Soon after I was mayor, there were straight-line winds that came through and blew a lot of trees down in the central neighborhoods—you know, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth streets. I thought maybe God was punishing Goshen for me being the mayor (laughs). And that was another time when the community came together. Everybody came out with their chainsaws and cleaned up the streets. And it wasn’t too long before the community was back in business. 

Phil: Were there other significant events that you recall during your tenure, or outside of your tenure, that really kind of shaped Goshen’s awareness of itself?

Allan: Oh man, I can’t think of things that shaped our environment. 

Phil: Do you remember the tornadoes?

Allan: Yeah, but I was like a junior in high school. What was that, 1964? Something like that, sixty-five? I was in high school and never really did get in the damaged part of Goshen. I helped some church members clean up their farms and stuff where buildings had blown over and did some stuff like that. I read the book about it, and I remember it. It’s not like it shaped Goshen.

Phil: Were there other national events that you particularly remember, as a resident of Goshen, experiencing with the community?

Allan: Well, there were things like Kennedy’s assassination and some of the negative things that happened there, but I can’t think of things that happened nationally that shaped Goshen. 

Phil: Right. Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on here, given this opportunity?

Allan: No, I don’t think so. I think we’ve hit on most of it.

Phil: Well, thank you very much for your candidness and your reflections and for your service, too.

Allan: Well, thank you. I enjoyed it while it happened.