Business View Magazine | February 2019

324 industry of the early 20th century.The Auburn Automobile Company produced its first car there in 1903, and the Auburn Rubber Company,which started in 1913,was a major tire producer, and then a manufacturer of rubber toys.And although the Auburn Automobile Company closed in the late 1930s, the city still celebrates those glory days each Labor Day weekend with the Auburn Cord Duesen- berg Festival at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Au- tomobile Museum, once the building where those cars were hand-assembled , and which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. But Auburn is a town that doesn’t just look back- wards; the city lives in the present and Mayor Yoder reveals that there’s “a lot going on.”One current project is the Heron Lake development, a modern, innovative,multi-use subdivision at the south end of town with easy access to I-69 and Fort Wayne.The 300-acre, planned community is being constructed on land that was first used by gravel operators in the 1920s who extracted about three quarters of what eventually became Heron Lake. When complete, the new subdivision will contain 200 residential units, including townhouses, single- family homes, and loft housing located above com- mercial establishments, a boutique winery, a hotel, and other small retail and service businesses. In the middle of the development will be a 100-acre pri- vate lake,with an island that will have manicured