The Schurz building: a broadcast plant raised on East Douglas Road, 2007–2008

Ground broken 2007 · unveiled 16 November 2008 · 1301 East Douglas Road

The move: Schurz Communications — the South Bend company that owned the South Bend Tribune, WSBT television and the WSBT radio group — broke ground in 2007 on a new broadcast headquarters on East Douglas Road in Mishawaka, on land adjoining the Edison Lakes office park, some five miles from the downtown South Bend studios the stations were leaving. The Tribune's report of the groundbreaking, carried in this build's newspapers file, described a building that would house three television channels, three radio stations, the Mishawaka bureau of the South Bend Tribune and the corporate offices of Schurz itself. The plant was built from the ground up for digital broadcasting: some 85,000 square feet, more than twice the size of the old Jefferson Boulevard facility, with the studios, newsroom and master control designed around a file-based, all-digital workflow.

The unveiling came on 16 November 2008, when WSBT-TV presented its new all-digital facility beginning with the 10 p.m. newscast on its second digital subchannel, and became the first station in the Michiana market to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition. The radio stations had begun broadcasting from the new building a few weeks earlier. The production fact is the one this section exists to carry: from that autumn, the news, weather and programming operations of the market's heritage broadcast cluster were physically seated in Mishawaka — while every license involved remained, as the license test above states, a license of South Bend or of Benton Harbor. The old downtown building the stations vacated passed to the market's public broadcaster, WNIT, which gutted and rebuilt it as its Center for Public Media; that afterlife belongs to South Bend's file, and returns in this one only at the cable-access entry below, where the circle closes.

Sources

1. South Bend Tribune, groundbreaking report, 2007 — the building's announced occupants: three television channels, three radio stations, the Tribune's Mishawaka bureau and Schurz corporate offices; carried in this build's newspapers file.
2. Peter B. De Kever's Mishawaka history, as carried in the newspapers file — the building at 85,000 square feet.
3. WSBT-TV station record — the all-digital facility unveiled 16 November 2008, beginning with the 10 p.m. subchannel newscast; first Michiana station to broadcast local newscasts in high definition; radio broadcasting from the facility some weeks before the unveiling.
4. Scott Fybush, "Site of the Week" tour of the new facility (visit published 22 April 2011) — 85,000 square feet, more than twice the old building; land adjacent to the Edison Lakes office park on Douglas Road, about five miles from downtown.