From printing presses to worship, South Bend City Church moves into Tribune building

SOUTH BEND, Ind.-- South Bend City Church has made its home in the old South Bend Tribune printing press building.

The church began in 2016. It rented space in the old Studebaker administration building, looking for a permanent home.

"Our congregation kind of comes from all over," said Lead Pastor, Jason Miller. "There's a lot of downtown South Bend people, there's people who drive in from Goshen, Warsaw, Niles. We're kind of an eclectic faith community."

Church leaders closed the sale in 2022 to buy the printing press building for one million dollars from Schurz Communications, the company that owned the tribune and its buildings.

"This moment represents years of vision and planning and collaboration," said Willow Wetherall, executive director of Downtown South Bend (DTSB).

"This is part of a lot of investment that's coming into the downtown area, we've got more than one billion dollars in private investment coming into the downtown," said Caleb Bauer, executive director of community investment for the City of South Bend.

Friday was a celebration and official ribbon-cutting for phase one of this redevelopment.

"So phase one completed the ground floor of the building," Miller said, "which gives us the room we're in right now, along with kids rooms and classrooms, those rooms are both used by our church and the boys and girls clubs. Phase two is the second floor and the rooftop."

Phase two will include working on the upper floors and rooftop, and eventually the worship space, currently on the ground floor, will move into the space that stored the three-story printing presses.

"The main room where the printing press was housed is this gorgeous, soaring, kind of vaulted cathedral-like room," Miller said. "And we actually found out later that when this building was being built, some of the downtown business community jokingly called this 'tribune church,' because it has that kind of dimension."

But what about the rest of the block, the former home of the South Bend Tribune newsroom, purchased by the University of Notre Dame?

"Planning is underway for a facility that will be an extraordinary environment involving the intersections of research, industry, and community," said Scott Ford, Notre Dame's associate vice president for economic development. "So, imagine a number of applied research activities of the university co-located with advanced employers and community partners."

South Bend City Church is still fundraising for phase two, more information can be found here.