A Hot Market?
South Bend builds on its diverse economy.
by Heidi Prescott Wieneke
A year ago, South Bend was ranked one of the Top 40 hottest real-estate markets for business. Other cities on the list from Expansion Management magazine included Indianapolis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Houston and Denver. South Bend made the list for the first time based on available land, office and industrial space inventory, along with redevelopment opportunities for new and expanding companies.
The city of South Bend is redeveloping the old Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Co. and Oliver Chilled Plow Works industrial corridors for warehousing and distribution, with hopes to recruit light-industrial companies south of downtown. Blackthorn Corporate Park is expanding with new research-and-development firms. The downtown office market is witnessing resurgence, and the south side is seeing new investment from retailers and restaurants.
"We’re large enough to have the resources to support business and provide a great quality of life, but small enough to be friendly," says South Bend Mayor Stephen J. Luecke. "As we look to the future, we want to build on our existing strengths and help our existing businesses thrive. We’ve learned a diverse economy is good for us."
Location is one of South Bend’s biggest assets and the main reason the city has become a hub for manufacturing and distribution.
Whether it's research and development at Bosch Braking Systems and Underwriters Laboratories, services provided by Crowe Chizek and Co. and Press Ganey Associates, or distribution and warehousing operations at AJ Wright and Tire Rack, location is critical to South Bend's business base.
The city is enjoying retail development as well. The old Scottsdale Mall property was recently demolished to make way for Erskine Village, a 510,000-square-foot, $35 million retail center. It will feature a large strip mall and a number of multi-tenant buildings and freestanding restaurants.
Diversity has helped the local economy weather tough times.
"We have a little bit of everything," says Sharon Kendall, director of South Bend's department of economic and community development. "We are the regional center for the banking, legal and service entities, and with our universities, we have a leg up on other communities."
By partnering with businesses in R&D projects, providing strong job-market candidates and employing about 4,800 people, the University of Notre Dame plays a critical role in maintaining and strengthening the diversity of the economy.
"We’re here because the universities are phenomenal resources," says Mel Hall, president and CEO at Press Ganey Associates. Press Ganey is a leading patient-satisfaction measurement company founded in South Bend in 1985 by two Notre Dame alums and professors. Press Ganey is a South Bend success story, having grown from 40 to 425 employees and 90,000 square feet in five buildings.
"We have considered leaving. We need to continue to expand, and there’s not a lot of office space in downtown South Bend. But we wanted to stay here, and the city stepped up and helped us find some buildings and incentivised us to stay," Hall says.
"What causes growth here? The educational institutions and the fact that people can find meaningful work here," he says. "It’s a great place to work. There’s a very strong work ethic in this area. People want to make a difference."
One of the city’s biggest growth stories is Memorial Hospital & Health System, which has made about $300 million in capital investments to its downtown medical campus since the mid-1990s. The centralized location, medical research being completed at Notre Dame, along with the entrepreneurial spirit that has spawned such medical-related business startups as Press Ganey and Environmental Health Laboratories, now Underwriters Laboratories, have indirectly contributed to Memorial’s success.
"The link and tie to Notre Dame’s clinical and biotechnological research is critical in developing new jobs for the future, as is developing a technology park and incubators that would enable companies to get started," says Phil Newbold, Memorial’s president and chief executive officer.
Memorial has the second-largest newborn intensive care unit in the state, second to Riley Hospital in Indianapolis; the hospital recently became the second in Indiana to earn verification as a Level II trauma center; and during the next few years it will open its new heart and vascular center and construct a children’s hospital within the hospital.
A challenge for South Bend is solving the north-south transportation link on U.S. 31 to Indianapolis, officials agree. More people might stay in-state for health care with a better highway, rather than drive to Chicago or Ann Arbor.
"South Bend is a wonderful place for health care," Newbold says. "This is a great place to raise a family, the schools are good, the cost of housing is phenomenally low and you can get around in 20 minutes to just about anywhere. It’s a great community to live in, without the problems bigger cities have."
http://www.indianabusiness.com/articles/2005/0105_J.html
LOL oh wait, you wanted Fort Wayne didn't you? All of this, along with the distribution (AJ Wright), plus a developer wants to develop the Lasalle building downtown and put a Hilton Hotel there (lol a hilton garden inn, so what?)...and South Bend is looking pretty damn good these days.
Northwest Indiana (esp. Porter Co) will continue to grow quickly, almost as fast as some suburban Indianapolis counties.
