Portage? What do you know? (South Bend, Gary: new home, employment, movies)

[milljs]

Does anyone know anything about portage? I know a lot of the cities are very close up there, but is portage good? bad? safe?

[mustang65]

I grew up in Portage, IN and now live on the west coast (CA).

Portage has about 30,000-40,000 people, and is centrally located between the City (Chicago) and Indiana farm country.

Pros:

1. Near Chicago and farm country. You can see both major metropolitan areas and beautiful country sunsets in same day.

2. Decent schools. Portage High School is one of the largest in IN, and has a good variety of vocational programs that small schools don't offer.

3. Reasonable cost of living. Homes are still affordable, although Chicago commuters are catching on to that fact and slowly raising property values.

4. Safety. Portage is a safe place to live and visit.

5. Ability to use legal fireworks: In my part of CA, you can't play with fireworks on private property due to wildfire danger. In Portage, we always had fun with bottle rockets/M-80's firecrackers, and Roman Candles every 4th of July.

Cons:

1. Pollution: Portage is in NW Indiana, downwind from some of the oldest, most polluting steel mills in the US. On windy days, sometimes you get the smog haze-cloud drifting in Portage.

2. Industrial Economy: It seems that the whole region depends on the success of the steel industry, and competition from foreign steel has caused plant layoffs in recent years.

3. Summer Road Construction on I-80/I-94. Every summer they re-build a section of the 1-80/I-94 roadway, and it causes significant delays if you work or visit the area approaching Gary/Hammond/IL State Line.

4. Smoking in bars/clubs/restaurants. One of my personal pet peeves is smoking, and Indiana hasn't banned smoking in restaurants/bars/pool halls yet. In CA, I can drink a cold beer and shoot pool without smelling like a pack of cigarettes afterwards. If you smoke or don't mind it, it won't bother you.

[goldpolkadots]

I've only driven through Portage, (I live in South Bend) and while the high school and surrounding area looks nice, it's a little too close to Scary Gary.

[Then&Now]

Originally Posted by mustang65

2. Industrial Economy: It seems that the whole region depends on the success of the steel industry, and competition from foreign steel has caused plant layoffs in recent years.

I think that could be true for the 80's and maybe into the early 90's, but I don't think that to be the case now. With nearly 40,000 people now in Portage, the steel industry doesn't hold as big of an ifluence because you have so many people that commute to Chicago and even a good number now to South Bend/Mishawaka. Most of the people migrating here from Chicago are doing so for the cheaper cost of living, not to work at the steel mills. Also, more and more large businesses are coming into play here, as well and neighboring towns are coming here to go to the movies, shop, and eat.

Anyway, to the OP, Portage is a great town and as I said, it is thriving. It's a very safe and relatively clean city. It's kind of in the center too. You can drive 20 minutes to Michigan City to go shopping at the outlet mall or to the marina or zoo. Then on the other side, you can drive 20 minutes to Merrillville to go shopping at Westfield Mall or the many other shopping areas as well as the many restaurants. You would also be about 20 minutes from downtown Valparaiso with shopping and eating there too. And of course you have the beaches and you can hop on the train and be in downtown Chicago in less than an hour. Portage is a great place.

[mustang65]

I haven't lived in the Portage area since the mid-90's: it's entirely possible that the economy depends less on the steel industry today.

They were building a lot of new homes there the last time I visited in summer of 2007, so I have no problem believing Then&Now's comment.

-Mustang65

[summer22]

Originally Posted by Then&Now

I think that could be true for the 80's and maybe into the early 90's, but I don't think that to be the case now. With nearly 40,000 people now in Portage, the steel industry doesn't hold as big of an ifluence because you have so many people that commute to Chicago and even a good number now to South Bend/Mishawaka. Most of the people migrating here from Chicago are doing so for the cheaper cost of living, not to work at the steel mills. Also, more and more large businesses are coming into play here, as well and neighboring towns are coming here to go to the movies, shop, and eat.

First, about the industrial air pollution that someone mentioned earlier in the thread - absolutely true. There's less of it in Chesterton and Valparaiso, probably because of the denser forests at the state park and national lakeshore giving a buffer. I can speak from experience about South Haven which is due south of the steel mill along Route 149, if the wind is blowing from the north, you can smell metal in the air. However according to what people say, at one time in the '50's and '60's, you could see the pollution in the air, so the problem has been been somewhat alleviated.

I'm going to be working in Portage temporarily... so I'm interested to see what the demographics are, as far as steel industry people vs. Chicago commuters. My perception is that the biggest salaries in this area come from the steel industry. This article says 40% of steel industry workers are unionized and it gives some hourly wage rates. Also from that article:

In 1996, however, Ohio was ranked the number one steel state in the nation for the first time. Ohio produced and processed $5.3 billion in steel that year, while Indiana trailed at $4.9 billion. Pennsylvania employed the most workers (36,300 compared to 35,400 in Ohio and 33,300 in Indiana), but only ranked 3rd in production at $3.6 billion

A Crain's Chicago Business article I found (a little out-of-date, and couldn't get the link to paste) said this:

Steel mills are humming again in Northwest Indiana. But that activity isn't translating into new jobs. Even as steel companies racked up record profits in 2004, the employment base continued to evaporate. The number of people working in Northwest Indiana's steel industry last year fell to 19,000, down 6% from 2003. Employment in the steel industry is off 18.4% since 2001, according to Indiana University's Business Research Center. Overall employment in the region last year was down 0.5% from 2003 and off 2.2% from 2001.

Here's another one with employment and wage statistics: Gary

Another one, The state of steel. gives some percentages about employment:

As recently as 1969, employment in the steel mills accounted for nearly 30 percent of total local employment in northwest Indiana, but only 0.8 percent in the U.S. as a whole. By December 2002, those percentages had declined to 8 percent in northwest Indiana and less than 0.2 percent in the nation.