The Parks as Technology Real Estate: One Park, Read Whole

Indiana Enterprise Center · Formerly the New Carlisle Economic Development Area

Lead: The row asks for two parks. There is one. The “two” are two names for a single ground at two dates, and the equivalence is printed honestly rather than inflated into a pair.

The ground's own record, from St. Joseph County, runs: the New Carlisle Economic Development Area was established in 1987 to facilitate development on several hundred acres beside the Norfolk Southern corridor west of the town, its anchor the I/N Tek works. In 1997 the county Redevelopment Commission expanded it to approximately 4,000 acres and established a tax-increment financing district; in fall 2016 it was expanded again to 4,600 acres in three allocation areas. In 2017, as the county undertook master planning to make the area a certifiable, shovel-ready mega-site, “the development area was named the Indiana Enterprise Center” — the county's own words, and the whole of the “second park”: a renaming inside one continuous development area. The later IEC Area Management Plan frames a 7,200-acre core development area, of which about 2,200 acres had been previously developed; the three acreages (4,000 / 4,600 / 7,200) describe different boundaries at different dates — TIF area, expanded area, and planning core — and are printed unmerged.

Read as technology real estate, the tenant record by name and date is: I/N Tek (cold-rolling, from the 1987 area's founding project; production from 1990) and I/N Kote (galvanizing, announced 1999 in the county record), the steel-finishers on the US 20 / Edison Road corridor; the St. Joseph Energy Center, a natural-gas combined-cycle plant (deal December 2015, groundbreaking May 2016, Phase I 700 MW class, $500 million project as proposed); the AWS data-center campus (announced April 25, 2024, $11 billion, in the IEC per the state and county); and the GM / Samsung SDI battery plant (announced June 2023, 680 acres within the IEC, about 3 million square feet and 1,700 employees in the county's telling; see the roster article for the 2026 ownership change). The county's 2024 tenant roll for the wider IEC also names, among others, American Electric Power, Cleveland-Cliffs Tek and Kote, Navistar, and Alkegen — printed as a county roll, not as a claim that each is a technology tenant. Infrastructure is part of the real-estate record: the Town of New Carlisle provides water and water management to the district and the City of South Bend provides sewer — a small town's utility as the water utility of an industrial county, which is the bridge to the network article below.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County, “New Carlisle Economic Development Area,” sjcindiana.gov / sjcparks.org mirror — established 1987; 1997 expansion to c. 4,000 acres and TIF; 2016 expansion to 4,600 acres; 2017 naming as the Indiana Enterprise Center; St. Joseph Energy Center terms; GM site selection June 2023 (680 acres, c. 3M sq ft, 1,700 employees, $3.5B, substantial completion expected Dec. 2027). Read in full.
2. Indiana Enterprise Center Area Management Plan, Ch. 5 Conclusion, and county Farm Bureau presentation, Feb. 6, 2020 — 7,200-acre core development area; c. 2,200 acres previously developed.
3. Northwest Indiana Business Magazine, Apr. 25, 2024 — IEC at 2,920 acres in that telling, with tenant roll incl. AEP, Cleveland-Cliffs Tek and Kote, Navistar, Alkegen; utilities: water from the Town of New Carlisle, sewer from South Bend, gas NIPSCO, electric I&M/AEP. Acreage variance printed unmerged.