User:D kopis/Ignition Park, South Bend

Ignition Park, South Bend
Ignition Park is a technology park under development in South Bend, Indiana, USA, on as much as 180 acres of land owned by the City of South Bend.

It represents the municipal government's response to a decision in 2008 by the Semiconductor Research Corporation's Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) to locate the fourth of its national research centers at the University of Notre Dame. Known as MIND, the Midwest Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery is focused on creating the architecture to replace the complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology used in a range of electronic devices today. Through MIND, Notre Dame brings together researchers from seven other universities: Purdue University, Penn State University, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas at Dallas, Georgia Tech University and Cornell University.

Ignition Park is one of the two locations that make up Indiana's first two-site State-Certified Technology Park in South Bend. The other is Innovation Park at Notre Dame, located on 12 acres on the city's northeast side adjacent to the Notre Dame campus. The first 54,000-square-feet building at Innovation Park is scheduled for completion in fall 2009. Innovation Park at Notre Dame will facilitate commercialization of many forms of research, by convening innovators throughout the entire Notre Dame community and beyond.

Companies formed at Innovation Park may choose to expand their operations at Ignition Park, and by doing so, they'll continue to receive support services and other benefits from being part of the same state-certified technology park. Planning is under way at Ignition Park for the siting of 2 million square feet of high-tech office and support space, including the anticipated construction of clean room facilities that could be leased by start-up companies.

Ignition Park sits on the grounds of the former Studebaker Corp., the legendary auto manufacturer that used to be the economic backbone of the local economy.

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.

Ignition Park will concentrate on high-potential technologies and ventures, as well as the commercialization of nanotechnology concepts inspired by MIND.

"Ignition Park signals that this park will spark the creativity of researchers and engineers into the commercialization of new innovative products that we have yet to imagine," says South Bend Mayor Stephen J. Luecke. "The name draws on the city's legacy of innovation and heritage in the automotive industry, yet points to our future as a launching pad for nanotechnology and other high-tech ventures."