The two parks — Innovation Park and Ignition Park

2008 – TODAY

Innovation Park, at the campus edge: Innovation Park at Notre Dame broke ground on 26 September 2008 and held its grand opening on 23 October 2009: a $13 million, 55,000-square-foot, three-story first building at 1400 East Angela Boulevard, on twelve acres directly south of the campus, approved in 2008 as the state's nineteenth certified technology park. Its offer to tenants was the era's own — laboratory and office space and, in the park's words, "virtually unlimited network bandwidth via the region's dark fiber network," the Metronet of the entry below doing duty as a selling point. The building took LEED Silver certification in January 2011. The second building, Quinn Hall — a $5 million gift announced 29 August 2016, 40,000 square feet, home of the university's IDEA Center — followed; by 2016 the park counted 59 ventures launched since 2009, 29 of them operational, at 90 percent occupancy.

Ignition Park, on Studebaker ground: Ignition Park was announced in 2008 as the City of South Bend's answer to the same decision — the city-side half of what the university's Innovation Park was on the campus side, the two together forming Indiana's first two-site state-certified technology park. The ground was the point: some 140 acres of the former Studebaker works south of downtown, cleared of the industry that had made the city industrial, offered to the industry meant to succeed it. The first tenant was a data center — Dana Realty's 45,000-square-foot facility, ground broken in 2011 and opened in 2012; Great Lakes Capital bought thirteen acres in 2014 and finished the Catalyst One and Catalyst Two buildings in 2016, $12 million and 90,000 square feet between them. The Technology Resource Center — $2.7 million approved by the Redevelopment Commission in June 2018, 12,000 square feet inside Catalyst Two — opened in November 2019. The park's largest single institution is the turbomachinery laboratory of the next entry, and its most noted corporate address is 1173 Ignition Drive, the headquarters of Press Ganey — the health-care measurement firm founded by two Notre Dame professors, whose own telling stands in the Business Gaps section of this build.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame News, 2008–2009 — Innovation Park's groundbreaking (26 September 2008) and grand opening (23 October 2009); $13 million, 55,000 square feet, three floors, twelve acres at 1400 E. Angela Blvd.; the state's 19th certified technology park; the dark-fiber bandwidth offer.
2. Innovation Park at Notre Dame — LEED Silver certification, January 2011; Quinn Hall, the $5 million Quinn gift announced 29 August 2016; 59 ventures launched since 2009, 29 operational, 90 percent occupancy, by 2016.
3. City of South Bend / Ignition Park record — the park announced 2008 on about 140 acres of former Studebaker ground; with Innovation Park, Indiana's first two-site state-certified technology park; the Dana Realty data center (2011–12); Great Lakes Capital's Catalyst One and Catalyst Two (2016, $12 million, 90,000 square feet); the Technology Resource Center ($2.7 million, June 2018; opened November 2019).