People, quality of life make Goshen special place to live, work and dream
Ask people what makes Goshen so special, and you’ll hear about the outdoor recreation opportunities, the vibrant downtown and the people.
Kate Steury, owner and operator of Shirley’s Gourmet Popcorn on Main Street, said one story epitomizes Goshen’s sense of pride.
Several people who had attended a funeral the week before were back in town to buy more of her popcorn. The group had been given micro bags of cheddar popcorn. But her store wasn’t open yet. When she overheard them say it was closed, she introduced herself and opened the store early.
That’s the kind of hospitality Steury hopes others will show toward visitors.
“I always say our goal is to make someone’s day brighter,” she said.
For Nick Kieffer, president and CEO of the Goshen Chamber of Commerce, that’s a familiar story.
He likens it to the Old Bag Factory, a repurposed former factory for retail and event spaces.
“It’s a great place for visitors,” he said. “It has some artisan shops, some retail shops. It has an event hall on the third floor and a company called Bread & Chocolate. It’s a beautiful venue to host any type of event up there, from a business meeting to a wedding.
“It’s a great little destination place to shop and do business,” he said.
That sentiment describes Goshen as well as the Old Bag Factory.
“Midwestern pragmatism runs deep here,” Mayor Gina Leichty said. “Strong communities aren’t built on wishful thinking. They are shaped through careful planning, collaboration and the willingness to make difficult decisions that balance today’s needs with future prosperity.”
More than just campers
In Goshen, as in the rest of Elkhart County, the recreational vehicle industry is king. It’s an industry that traditionally ebbs and flows with large economic tides, but that seems to be abating.
Kieffer and others point to recent economic diversification.
“We are a manufacturing town and a manufacturing county, and we make a lot of really cool things here and in Goshen and Elkhart counties,” he said. “I think that industry spurs the entrepreneurial spirit amongst everybody, so we have startups. Our small businesses continue to thrive.”
The chamber provides business counseling service, offering advice to entrepreneurs.
“Our counselors are constantly busy with clients who are looking to start and grow their business,” Kieffer said. “It’s just the entrepreneurial spirit of Goshen that’s been alive and well for many years.”
People see an opportunity, a niche market, that they can tackle with their business idea and ask the chamber for help in making their business get established and grow.
Leichty has been involved in helping the community grow — long before she took office.
Be careful when you step up for a worthy cause. It just might change your life.”
“I never set out to be mayor,” she said. “I began as an organizer and volunteer, working alongside my community to help Goshen prosper. What started as a way to give back kept growing, reshaping my career and drawing me deeper into public service.
“Be careful when you step up for a worthy cause. It just might change your life.”
Leichty’s background is in the private sector, building a career in marketing, business strategy, and community and economic development.
“As an entrepreneur, I learned to maximize resources, make strategic investments and balance financial discipline with long-term vision,” she said. “Public service became a natural extension of that work — ensuring Goshen’s businesses, residents and public assets have the support they need to succeed.
“What began as a passion project — organizing events, revitalizing downtown and supporting local businesses — grew into a lifelong commitment to strengthening this city’s financial and operational foundation.”
The pandemic prompted a lot of rethinking, including in Goshen. Steury said the RV industry saw customers wanting to buy RVs and campers to go on vacation with their family while keeping distance from others.
Companies in Goshen and elsewhere in the county realized the wisdom of diversifying the revenue stream for the RV industry, branching off into cabinetry and other products that serve not just the RV industry but also home renovations and other uses.
“This is a city that doesn’t wait for change to happen,” Leichty said. “It creates it. Over the years, dedicated residents, business owners and civic leaders have revitalized downtown, expanded entrepreneurial opportunities, and built one of the strongest manufacturing districts in the country.”
Destination spot
Amanda Sensenig, associate professor of psychology at Goshen College, and her husband, Jesse, moved to Goshen for her job opportunity but also to raise a family.
She grew up in Goshen and appreciates the quality of life.
It was a good pace to grow up, and she was happy there, but the community is even better now, Sensenig said.
“We really love living here, and we’ve lived in some fun places,” she said. “There are so many opportunities for our daughter with sports and theater and all sorts of different things. There are lots of activities for us as a family.”
As a kid, shopping downtown probably wouldn’t have been on Sensenig’s list, but as an adult, she now appreciates the variety of shopping opportunities and recommends it as a fun afternoon for visitors.
“People have worked really hard to redevelop and create it into a place that is a fun destination,” Sensenig said.
Steury agrees. Park downtown and walk around, exploring shops that you might not see elsewhere. You’ll be impressed, she said.
“Goshen is a city of makers and doers — people who build industries, strengthen communities and turn entrepreneurial ambition into reality,” Leichty said. “From its roots as a manufacturing powerhouse to its thriving arts and culture scene, Goshen has never been content with the status quo.”
She said Goshen is not just another stop in “flyover country.”
“Those who visit quickly understand that Goshen is rare, remarkable and unlike anywhere else,” she said. “Here, you’ll find the arts, culture, dining and economic opportunity of a much larger city — without the pretense, price tag or the traffic.”
Change is constant
Today, Goshen has a large Hispanic population. Multilingual messaging isn’t unusual.
“Goshen was founded and has prospered through the contributions of immigrants,” Leichty said. “Each generation of newcomers has shaped our identity, enriched our culture and driven our success.
“We are a community that welcomes new ideas, people and opportunities. Diversity and immigration are not obstacles here. In fact, they are the foundation of our strength.”
Steury has seen that strength help shape the downtown.
“So many stores are owned by all different nationalities,” she said. “I think that our Main Street should reflect what our community is.”
Serving the Hispanic residents has affected how Goshen Public Library does business, library Director Ann-Margaret Rice said.
During the pandemic, the library drafted a comprehensive, long-range plan.
“One of the tasks of that plan was to identify ways that we could serve our Hispanic and Latino community in a more sincere way, in a more in-depth way, than we have been in the past,” Rice said.
The city, with a population of 34,500, is about 31 percent Hispanic, according to the 2020 census.
“We really were not connecting with the community,” she said. “For instance, they really weren’t coming to our children’s programs, our teen programs.
“We started to look at our hiring practices and were we doing enough to make sure we had front-facing employees who could actually speak Spanish with this population and who were recognizable to the population.”
In partnership with the Elkhart County Community Foundation, the library hired an outreach specialist to serve the Hispanic/Latino population, “sort of to meet them where they were in the community as opposed to just sort of expecting that they would automatically visit us just because we’re so inherently good,” she said.
She said they are building on that success.
“We now are doing more community outreach to these populations, both connecting with students at schools but also through churches and other events,” Rice said.
Among other activities, the library has been part of the Hispanic Heritage Festival in Goshen for the last few years and has developed in-house programs specific to that demographic.
Some programs are bilingual, but others are done exclusively in Spanish. The library also is buying books written in Spanish, not just translated.
“We wanted authentic voices, and so we made a concerted effort to do that,” Rice said.
Goshen Community Schools Superintendent Jim DuBois said his district is also embracing that idea.
“We have a dual language program where kids are also learning Spanish, for English speakers who come in learning Spanish. They’ll have their day in school basically in Spanish, so they become fluent speakers,” DuBois said. “We’re expanding that more and more. We want everybody to be able to talk to each other in town.”
Goshen College’s Gilberto Perez Jr. is both dean of students and vice president for student life and Hispanic serving initiatives. He’s a former City Council member as well.
More than half the kids in the K-12 schools are Latino, he said. That number has grown. At Goshen College, almost 30% of students are Latino.
“We’ve reached the threshold where we now are qualified by the federal government to be a designated Hispanic-serving institution,” he said.
“I would say that the community of Goshen, over the years, has been welcoming to individuals from many different ethnic groups, and we see it all through the city of Goshen.”
That’s a big switch from the city’s early days as a sundown town, where only whites were welcome in town after dark, Perez noted. A City Council resolution passed several years ago acknowledged that past and agreed it was wrong.
“We come from many different places. We have many different cultures. We are many different ethnicities,” which is part of what makes Goshen a special place, he said.
Education
Goshen College has a long history in the city, founded in 1894 as a faith-based Christian liberal arts college. Its mission supports equipping young people’s desire to change the world and be global citizens, locally and abroad, Perez said.
The college’s study abroad program, begun in the 1960s, remains popular. Sending students to developing nations helps them understand the idea of culture and service while living with people from those communities, he said.
“We are here to make the world a better place,” Perez said.
Of course, educating students for careers is a primary focus, too. Of the college’s students who apply to medical school, 86% get in on their first try.
The city’s K-12 students are prepped with careers in mind, too.
“We want to be part of the economic development of the future for Goshen,” DuBois said.
“We’re starting an entrepreneurship program, trying to get real-life opportunities for kids to get engaged in business, see what it’s like to be in businesses” and see the pathway to get there while they’re still in high school.
With dual credits, it’s possible to earn an associate degree from Ivy Tech Community College while still in high school. When one of the elementary schools was no longer needed, the school district used it to offer additional career and technical education programs, he said.
“We feel like that’s the next wave of what education is all about, working with the business community, working with the community you serve, and finding ways to prepare kids for high-wage, high-demand jobs of the future, so that’s what we’re doing,” DuBois said. “We want to be known for how many entrepreneurs come out of Goshen. There’s a great entrepreneurial vibe here, and we want our school district to keep feeding that entrepreneurial vibe.”
Social aspect
Goshen Brewing Co. wants to be the meeting space for that sense of community, said Sensenig, who also is a co-founder.
“We try really hard to be a community hub and to be an active part of the community,” she said. “Psychology tells us that one of the best ways to be happy and content is to foster good social relationships, and so that’s one of the things that we’ve tried really hard to do.”
The brewery has done collaborations with many local businesses and nonprofits, she noted. It’s not the only way Sensenig and her husband foster a sense of community, though.
When a customer leaves a tip, it’s shared by the entire staff. Everyone contributes to the customer experience, she said.
“Goshen has a really great collaborative spirit that serves everybody well,” Sensenig said.
It also has a strong park system.
“We’re lucky that we live close to a park and some hiking trails in the woods,” Sensenig said. “We live close to the Millrace bike path, so we use all of those.”
Steury and others also enjoy the ability to ride a bicycle for recreation or to work. “I think that Goshen has a lot to offer,” she said.
Challenges
A housing shortage is consistently identified as a challenge facing Goshen, just as it does many other communities.
“We are actively working with developers, nonprofits, and local leaders to encourage a mix of workforce housing and market-rate developments,” Leichty said. “Goshen needs to grow responsibly, and we will continue advocating for sustainable policies that support housing accessibility, economic vitality and workforce needs.”
Like other municipalities, Goshen faces fiscal challenges.
“That ranges from emergency vehicles and public safety equipment to road maintenance and infrastructure upgrades,” Leichty said. “These challenges are escalating faster than traditional funding sources can sustain.”
Leichty urged residents to speak out to state legislators to support sustainable solutions and to ensure the city and state don’t fall behind.
“Goshen has never been a city that stands still,” she said. “Every generation has faced challenges and found a way to rise, adapt and move forward.
“Today, we stand at a crossroads. How we respond to funding threats, infrastructure needs and economic shifts will define our city for decades.”
But her optimism is ever present.
“Goshen’s story is still being written,” Leichty said. “And just like those who came before us, we will make sure that what we build today leaves a legacy of strength, opportunity and resilience.” •
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