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South Bend Redevelopment Commission <br />Regular Meeting –June 4, 2010 <br /> <br />6. NEW BUSINESS (CONT.) <br /> <br />B. Airport Economic Development Area <br /> <br />(5) continued… <br /> <br />We also need to look at information <br />technology businesses. We’ve been very <br />good at that here and we shouldn’t discount <br />them. They don’t sound very high tech, but <br />they are. Information technology costs much <br />less to develop, it comes to <br />commercialization much more quickly and it <br />is more sustainable more quickly. We need <br />to be talent scouts, all of us. <br /> <br />We also need clusters of similar businesses. <br />Clusters of competitors, but who realize that <br />the value of networking is more important <br />than avoiding competition. Vendors with <br />support services want to be near that cluster. <br />South Bend needs to be building clusters. <br /> <br />Education is the third column. Ivy Tech <br />instituted a two year program, at the request <br />of Notre Dame, to educate Notre Dame <br />employees. They thought there might be <br />twenty-five students. One hundred signed <br />up. Those students are graduating this year. <br />Most of them are going on to IUSB for a <br />four-year degree. That’s responding to the <br />need of business. Purdue is expanding its <br />engineering technology program from two <br />years to four. <br /> <br />Education is more than our public school <br />system from K-12. There are a lot of <br />exciting things going on in education that we <br />don’t even know exists, is available to us. <br />We need an educational asset inventory also, <br />so when the search person comes to South <br />Bend, we can say, “Look at what the children <br /> 16 <br /> <br />