The carrier hotel: Kevin Smith, Soft Chip, and Global Access Point

STATION BOUGHT 1979 · GLOBAL ACCESS POINT 2003 · DATA CENTER SOLD 2024

South Bend's internet era has a street address: Union Station, the art-deco depot of 1929 across the tracks from the Studebaker plant, which Amtrak left in 1971 and vandals and copper thieves then worked over. Kevin M. Smith — a South Bend native and Notre Dame graduate — bought the derelict station and made it the seat of a succession of technology businesses: first Soft Chip Technology, a software house that did development work nationally for the construction industry, integrating computer-aided design and manufacturing with accounting; then the station's conversion into a telecommunications carrier hotel and data center, the business he organized in 2003 as Global Access Point. The purchase itself carries a printed conflict this section does not average: the station's standard history dates Smith's purchase to 1979, while ChoiceLight's account of the building says he bought it in 1981, following it through bankruptcy and winning it with a bid of 28,000 dollars. Both are printed; the building's own later operator is the second source, and the discrepancy stands as the record leaves it.

The conversion's scale is documented by its participants. ChoiceLight's account records nearly 16 million dollars invested in the station, some 22 telecommunications companies housed there choosing among one another's services, and the building's second life as a "digital telecom station where companies can hop on and off the information highway." By 2015 the Indiana Business Journal counted more than two dozen telecommunications providers in the building, a data center of thousands of servers with its space about 90 percent full — full enough that Smith's expansion across the tracks into Studebaker's old assembly buildings became the Renaissance District told in the Businesses section. The station sat where it sat for a reason the 2024 sale release states plainly: atop the transcontinental fiber system connecting Chicago to the East Coast, on the long-haul routes that pass under the city along the railroads. One thread of the business left early: Infinity Fiber, the Smith companies' fiber network running from Indianapolis through South Bend to Chicago, was acquired by Neutral Path Communications of Minnesota in September 2017, adding more than 300 route miles to the buyer — the release, in passing, rated Union Station among the top 40 carrier hotels in the nation.

The end of the founding ownership came in 2024, in two transactions. In July 2024 the city's Redevelopment Commission acquired the station building itself for 2.4 million dollars, looking toward a possible return of passenger trains. On September 4, 2024, fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty — 1547 — in partnership with Harrison Street, announced its acquisition of the Global Access Point Union Station data center and carrier hotel; the terms were not disclosed, and none is printed here. The building that had been the region's railroad station thus finished its technology career split in two: the depot back in public hands for the trains, and the data center in the portfolio of a national operator — still, per the buyer's release, a cornerstone of the region's connectivity, on the fiber that made it one.

Sources:

1. ChoiceLight, Inc., "Union Station" — Smith's purchase told as 1981 through bankruptcy at 28,000 dollars; Global Access Point as the telecom firm he started in 2003; nearly 16 million dollars invested; nearly 22 telecom companies housed; Soft Chip Technology's national software work for the construction industry. choicelight.org
2. Union Station (South Bend), station record — the 1929 opening, the 1971 end of trains, Smith's purchase dated 1979, the Technology Center as colocation hub; the Redevelopment Commission's July 2024 acquisition of the station for 2.4 million dollars. en.wikipedia.org
3. Indiana Business Journal, October 31, 2015 — more than two dozen telecommunications providers and thousands of servers at Union Station; the data center about 90 percent full; the Renaissance District expansion. ibj.com
4. Neutral Path Communications, September 25, 2017 — the acquisition of Infinity Fiber, LLC; the Indianapolis–South Bend–Chicago route; Union Station described as one of the region's largest data centers and a top-40 carrier hotel nationally; terms of the route-mile totals as released. telecomramblings.com (newswire.telecomramblings.com)
5. fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty and Harrison Street, September 4, 2024 — the acquisition of the Global Access Point Union Station data center; the transcontinental fiber position; terms not disclosed. 1547realty.com
6. the Businesses section of this history — the Renaissance District, the district's seed in Smith's 1979 purchase as that entry prints it, and the ground's later course.