HomeMy WebLinkAbout05-15-09 Transpo facility to relocate to support Ignition Park
Office of the Mayor
NEWS RELEASE
May 15, 2009
4:15 p.m.
Transpo facility to relocate to support Ignition Park
Contact:
Mikki Dobski, Director of Communications & Special Projects, 235-5855 or 876-1564
or Ann Kolata, Senior Redevelopment Specialist, 235-9371
The South Bend Redevelopment Commission authorized an agreement Friday with
Transpo, a public agency serving the area’s transportation needs, which will, in effect,
relocate Transpo’s new facility for the benefit of Ignition Park.
The Redevelopment Commission unanimously approved two actions related to the sale of
land at the southeast edge of Ignition Park to Transpo for the construction of new
administrative offices and facility for bus maintenance and operations.
Construction will begin this summer on a new 165,000-square-foot facility to replace
Transpo’s smaller facility on Northside Boulevard, which is more than 125 years old. The
facility is being built to obtain LEED Platinum certification and will take 12 to 18 months
to complete. LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a certification of
the U.S. Green Building Council.
Construction on the new Transpo facility originally was to have begun more than a year
ago at the site of the former South Bend Stamping Plant, for which demolition was
completed in June 2007, the largest demolition in the city’s history. Transpo was to be
the first tenant in what was planned as the Studebaker Industrial Park.
But those plans were reconsidered when the world’s leading computer chip makers
selected the University of Notre Dame as the home for MIND (Midwest Institute for
Nanoelectronics Discovery). The former Studebaker Corridor now is planned as Ignition
Park, the downtown portion of South Bend’s two-site state-certified technology park.
Ignition Park is being developed with an eye to commercialization of nanotechnology
discoveries growing out of MIND. When the potential community value of an undivided
Ignition Park became clear, Transpo officials worked with the City to relocate their
planned facility from the center of the site to its edge.
“Transpo officials have acted in the best interest of the greater South Bend community in
delaying their construction plans in order to relocate Transpo’s new facility to a site on
the southeast edge of Ignition Park rather than at the center of the space most conducive
to highly sensitive nanotechnology equipment,” said Mayor Stephen J. Luecke. “In this
manner, they demonstrated yet another way this public agency seeks to operate in the
broader public interest.”
In Friday’s action, the Commission:
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Terminated a previous contract for the sale and purchase of the former South Bend
Stamping Plant site.
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Approved a purchase agreement for a new site along Franklin Street and Lafayette
Boulevard, between Stull Street and Indiana Avenue.
As part of the termination agreement, the Commission will pay back $1 million to
Transpo that was made as a down payment on the purchase of the former Stamping Plant
property. As part of the new purchase agreement, Transpo will pay $648,000 for the new
21.6-acre site.
Ignition Park sits on the grounds of the former Studebaker Corp., the legendary auto
manufacturer that was the economic and innovative backbone of South Bend until closing
its doors in 1963. Since 2000, old abandoned buildings on the Ignition Park site have
been demolished in the state’s most aggressive brownfield reclamation effort to make
way for a high-tech manufacturing, commercialization and office complex of buildings
arrayed in a park-like environment
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