Ignition Park and the Renaissance District — the ground goes back to work

Ignition Park from 2012; the Renaissance District announced 2016

140 acres of Studebaker land: When Studebaker closed in 1963 it left more than a hundred acres of plant south of downtown, and for half a century the ground's future was the city's standing question. The answer that took hold was clearance and certification: the city cleared the site in an aggressive brownfield reclamation and made the 140 acres into Ignition Park, one of Indiana's first two-site State-Certified Technology Parks, paired with Innovation Park at Notre Dame. Its first tenant, Data Realty, arrived in the fall of 2012; the Catalyst One and Catalyst Two buildings followed, housing among others the Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory — the turbomachinery research and testing facility built by a partnership of the city, GE, Great Lakes Capital, Indiana Michigan Power, and the university — and the Technology Resource Center, with Press Ganey's South Bend future announced in the redevelopment record.

The buildings that stayed: North of the cleared ground, the surviving Studebaker complex took the other path: adaptive reuse as the Renaissance District, a mixed-use technology campus of nearly 1.1 million square feet in and around Building 84 — "Ivy Tower" — and the former Studebaker headquarters buildings. In 2016 the city, the state, and private developers broke ground on a $165 million renovation; the exterior of Building 84 was funded in 2017 with $3.5 million in state Regional Cities money matched by $3.5 million in city tax-increment financing. The district's seed was older and private: the data-center operator Kevin Smith had bought the city's Union Station in 1979 and made it a technology center, fiber hub and all, decades before the district had a name. The figures printed are the projects' documented public numbers; what the reborn ground will hold in fifty years is not a business fact yet, and none is printed.

Sources:

1. Regional Cities Initiative project overview, Renaissance District / Studebaker campus (Indiana Economic Development Corporation) — the $165 million renovation ground broken in 2016 by the City of South Bend, the State of Indiana, and private developers; the campus of nearly 1.1 million square feet; Building 84's exterior funded with $3.5 million in Regional Cities money and $3.5 million in city TIF (2017).
2. City of South Bend Redevelopment Commission resolutions and property records — the Studebaker Building 84 / Ivy Tower redevelopment items and the Union Station Technology Center record, including Kevin Smith's 1979 purchase of Union Station.
3. Ignition Park / Innovation Park project record, and the Pete Buttigieg mayoralty summary — Ignition Park's 140 acres of former Studebaker land, its state certification, Data Realty as first tenant in fall 2012, the Catalyst buildings, the Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory partnership, and the Technology Resource Center.