High-Tech ‘Landing Place’ Ready in South Bend

(Rendering provided by Great Lakes Capital)

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South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg says the official opening of a second Catalyst building delivers on the initial vision of Ignition Park. Several tech-focused businesses are already headquartered in the facility, located on the former Studebaker grounds. Buttigieg says Ignition Park serves as a landing place with "more elbow room" for businesses to grow than its sister property, the nearby Innovation Park at Notre Dame. Ignition Park is also home to the University of Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory, which partners with big players in advanced manufacturing like General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE).

Buttigieg tells Inside INdiana Business it’s "exciting and compelling" to see high-tech companies grow at a site that was abandoned more than 50 years ago.

Notre Dame owns Innovation Park and the City of South Bend owns the 83-acre Ignition Park. Buttigieg says the relationship between the two properties is unique, as they make up the only "dual-site tech park" in Indiana, a concept he says is intentional. Current tenants of the Catalyst One building at Ignition Park include MicroIntegration, Data Realty and Aunalytics. It also has open space for additional startups.

He says the properties are not just a magnet for Hoosier entrepreneurs and businesses, but also minds from outside the state. Buttigieg says the parks’ mission aligns with "new energies in the economy that weren’t there even just a few years ago, as well as, I think, a new willingness by the kinds of tech workers and talent, who are really the lifeblood of firms like this to look at South Bend and consider South Bend a place to live."

Buttigieg believes the businesses and people that have already chosen to locate to Ignition Park "make good on the whole concept of ‘The Silicon Prairie.’"