City to buy Union Station, explores Amtrak options

 

SOUTH BEND, Ind.-- Kevin Smith has owned Union Station since 1981, but Thursday, the South Bend Redevelopment Commission agreed to buy it.

"I've been caring for that facility for over 4 decades," said Smith.

The Redevelopment Commission approved three agreements with Smith, and all three were a package deal. For one, of course, the agreement to buy Union Station.

"Really, the goal here is reactivating the grand hall at union station," said Caleb Bauer, director of community investment. "We're going to be exploring that activation as a potential Amtrak station location."

This would make Union Station a train station once again.

"I've always thought of it as a train station," Smith said. "I've always been an advocate of moving the trains to the train station."

Currently, the building is home to a data center, so the city's $2.43 million investment would facilitate the private sale of the center, Bauer said.

He explained they'd be displacing the data center's administrative offices housed in the building in order to take back public use of the Grand Hall.

That's where the second agreement comes in, a purchase agreement for Smith to buy the Claey's Candy building from the city. That, then, would be where the data center's administrative offices can move to and expand.

"The Claeys Candy building is being proposed to sell to Kevin Smith, who would then sell it as part of the data center sale," Smith said.

"Claeys Candy is a good utilization because they need a place to grow the mechanicals and all the rest, and it will clean up that corner of South and Taylor," Smith said.

Although Smith is stepping away from the station and the data center he started, his work is far from done.

The third agreement is for Smith to rehabilitate the Studebaker Administration Building on Main Street. For decades, he's made it his mission to preserve Studebaker's history in South Bend.

"We need that cathartic effect of recognizing our past, cleaning it up, and moving it forward," he said.

"It was, of course, the headquarters of Studebaker Corporation until Studebaker's bankruptcy in 1963," Bauer said.

Then, from 1970 until 2005, it was the headquarters for the South Bend Community School Corporation but has been vacant now for 19 years.

Smith will rehab the building so it can be sold again for redevelopment.

"The city had taken ownership of the full Studebaker campus and ultimately demolished a significant amount of it," Bauer said. "If it weren't for Kevin Smith, we probably wouldn't have any of the remaining facilities that we see today."

"They would have had to tear [the administration building] down. But that's why I bought it," Smith said, "because what I tend to do if I see there's an asset that I believe needs to be preserved for the future, I guess I'm the type that steps in and rolls up my sleeves and makes it happen."