Eddy Street Commons: the lifestyle center at the campus gate

PHASE I OPENED LATE 2009 · PHASES II AND III COMPLETED JULY 2020 AND JULY 2021 · EDDY STREET SOUTH OF ANGELA BOULEVARD · CITY GROUND AT THE CAMPUS EDGE

A main street, built: The lifestyle-center form — the mall turned inside out, stores fronting on streets — reached South Bend not at a highway exit but at a university gate. Eddy Street Commons stands on city ground on Eddy Street, a half-mile south of the Notre Dame campus, built by the university with Kite Realty Group Trust of Indianapolis — the same Kite that had rebuilt the Scottsdale ground — over a partnership the university dates at fifteen years by 2020. Phase I, from Angela Boulevard to Napoleon Street, opened in late 2009: the university's announcement counts 170,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and office space together, with 266 apartments, 123 condominiums, 78 townhouses, two hotels, and a parking garage; the National League of Cities' award account of the same phase breaks the commercial space into 90,000 square feet of retail and 80,000 of office and prices the project at $215 million. The design is the point: three blocks of new-urbanist streetscape meant to give the campus the college-town main street it had never had, in the Northeast Neighborhood whose revitalization the city, the neighborhood, and the university had pursued together.

Completion, and the anchor the focus groups asked for: The development finished in two further phases — Phase II in July 2020, adding some 450 apartments and about 9,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, and Phase III in July 2021. Phase III brought the anchor the project had wanted since its focus groups: Trader Joe's, announced by the university and Kite on October 5, 2020, as the small-format specialty grocer residents had named most, anchoring the south end of the Commons with total investment in the development by then reported at nearly $300 million. The current tenant roll, from the leasing record, mixes the national names the form runs on — Trader Joe's, Five Guys, Urban Outfitters — with the hotels and the university's own Robinson Community Learning Center. Where Jefferson Pointe's Fort Wayne counterpart faces an interstate, Eddy Street Commons faces a campus: it is the one South Bend center built to be walked to, and the only one whose developer was a university.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame and Kite Realty Group Trust, "Notre Dame and Kite Realty Group announce the addition of Trader Joe's at Eddy Street Commons" (GlobeNewswire, October 5, 2020) — the fifteen-year partnership; Phase I opened late 2009 with 170,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and office space, 266 apartments, 123 condominiums, 78 townhouses, and the two hotels; Phase II's program; the Trader Joe's announcement and its focus-group standing.
2. National League of Cities, Awards for Municipal Excellence, Gold Award summary (2010) — Eddy Street Commons as a $215 million Kite development; Phase I's 90,000 square feet of retail and 80,000 of office; the 1,281-space garage; the Northeast Neighborhood frame.
3. Cressy Commercial Real Estate, Eddy Street Commons leasing material (current) — 90,000 square feet of retail and 82,000 of office; Phases II and III completed July 2020 and July 2021, Phase III adding Trader Joe's; the present tenant roll.