Data Realty: the incubator's first graduate

ANNOUNCED 2011 · OPENED 2012 · IGNITION PARK'S FIRST BUSINESS

The pipeline's proof of concept was a building full of other people's servers: Data Realty began as a startup company based at Innovation Park at Notre Dame, developed under the auspices of Graham Allen Partners, the South Bend private holding company formed to invest in early-stage, high-growth businesses — a name that recurs in this section. On February 9, 2011, Mayor Stephen J. Luecke announced the agreement: the city would sell Data Realty a 4.94-acre site at the eastern end of Ignition Park, on Franklin Street, and the company would build a Tier III data center of nearly 50,000 square feet — the first private, high-tech business in the technology park — at an estimated facility cost of 20 million dollars, not counting equipment, with fourteen full-time positions at opening rising toward thirty. The mayor's sentence for the occasion named the ground: "On land where once Studebaker automobiles were made, Data Realty will manage and analyze data to help businesses succeed in a competitive global environment." The state's certified-technology-park recertification filing, written at the end of 2012, records the completion at about 45,000 square feet and the company in occupation; later reporting put the investment at 15 million dollars in 2012. The two cost figures and the two sizes stand as their documents give them.

The company's place in the record is positional as much as financial. It was, in the mayor's phrase at the announcement, "the first Innovation Park client to 'graduate' to Ignition Park" — the two-site certified park working as designed, a venture conceived at the twelve-acre campus site and scaled on the 140 acres of cleared Studebaker ground. It was also, for several years, Ignition Park's only occupant, a single data center standing in the cleared field while the Catalyst buildings were still plans; the Chamber's 2016 account says so plainly. The firm it kept company with in those years was the one a mile north: where Global Access Point sold interconnection at the fiber crossing, Data Realty sold the region's small and mid-sized businesses a local Tier III floor of their own — the infrastructure era's two business models, carrier hotel and colocation, seated in the same small city at the same time.

Sources:

1. City of South Bend, Office of the Mayor, news release, February 9, 2011 — the land agreement; the nearly 50,000-square-foot Tier III data center; the estimated 20-million-dollar facility; Graham Allen Partners' auspices; President Rich Carlton; the first-graduate statement. docs.southbendin.gov
2. City of South Bend, State Certified Technology Park recertification application, November 26, 2012 — Data Realty in occupation at Ignition Park in a facility of about 45,000 square feet; 35 small businesses then at Innovation Park employing 81 people.
3. South Bend Regional Chamber, June 9, 2016 (from the South Bend Tribune) — Data Realty in its 45,000-square-foot data center from 2012 as Ignition Park's only occupant for several years; the 15-million-dollar investment figure. sbrchamber.com
4. Data Center Knowledge, February 11, 2011 — the project's announcement as carried in the data-center trade press. datacenterknowledge.com