admin note: visit our article on Eddy Street Commons from November 2009 for an update on progress including photos of finished buildings along Eddy Street.

Note Dame is pushing the redevelopment of the city south of its campus. It has sponsored the building of new homes on Notre Dame Avenue,  and is redesigning its streets to better interact with a coming college town shopping area. This proposed retail / residential strip, dubbed Eddy Street Commons for the street it surrounds, was featured in the South Bend Tribune today.

Market maven Heidi Prescott and Margaret Fosmoe, reporter behind the Tribune’s in depth series about condos near Notre Dame, lay out details of the proposal: essentially two hotels, one garage, lots of shops, and almost five hundred apartments, condos and townhouses.

It’s an exciting project that would create a smaller, newer alternative to the Grape Road – Main Street shopping and dining corridor. It could reinvigorate the neighborhood and help propel  the city’s smart growth. But don’t start planning your move just yet. The project is in its early stages and will require the coordination of several large, slow moving groups: the University, a development company out of Indianapolis, the Indiana Department of Transportation (to reconfigure SR 23 / South Bend Avenue) and the city of South Bend.

If you want to live in a condo near Notre Dame but don’t want to wait, try Oak Hill (current listing) or the North Douglas Condos, or visit the South Bend Condo Guide to get the scoop on almost every condo in South Bend.

If you want a chance to get your thoughts about this development on the record, the required rezoning request is open to a public hearing Tuesday, June 19th at 3:30 in the county-city building.

If you just want to chime in on what shops you’d like to see come to the area, visit Heidi Prescott’s Market Basket Blog.

8 Responses

  1. Sure hope that the Eddy Street Commons pays real estate property taxes, unlike most of the University. Odd that off-campus apartments and housing units pay real estate property taxes but ND on-campus housing doesn’t have to…it is hardly a “charity” with the need to be tax exempt. Also, why is the ND Bookstore building and on-campus restaurants that are open to the public exempt from real estate property taxes??? I don’t think ND with it’s $3.5 Billion Dollar endowment should be supported by the local taxpayers via real estate property tax exemptions….it is absurd.

  2. ND is an unincorporated community. Therefore it is not subject to local taxes. Without ND around South Bend would lose millions and millions of dollars a year.

    You need to think long term–that is what the endowment is for.

    Just look at the tuition and fees of ND students. That’s where the money comes from, not from South Bend.

  3. With all due respect to Mike in the last post, that is nonsense. ND is not subject to real estate property taxes because if claims to be a not for profit entity, not because it occupies unincorporated land. Unincorporated land is subject to real estate property taxes just like incorporated land is.

    I have no idea what is meant regarding the endowment quote. The endowment isn’t for the benefit of anyone expect ND, period. Call them up, they aren’t going to share it with you or anyone else.

    Lastly, I don’t think we should have to worry about ND being around. They aren’t moving and with so much invested in the area it just isn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future. ND isn’t like a manufacturer that can just open up shop somewhere else. It is time that ND pay its fair share of taxes just like everyone else in the unincorporated county. They should be tax-exempt on property that they run businesses and apartments on. That is unfair and ridiculous.

  4. I meant to say “They should NOT be tax-exempt on property that they run businesses and apartments on.”

  5. I’m not sure where a “fair” breakpoint should be, but I do agree it’s a shame that every non-profit is exempt from property taxes without limits. Perhaps giving them a break or limiting the amount would be better than just wiping it out completely.

    I wholeheartedly appreciate the commerce, jobs and other value that Notre Dame (and other non-profits for that matter) brings to our community. However for the record, Notre Dame does not employ the majority of South Bend. According to http://www.exploresouthbend.org , South Bend’s population is well over 107,000 and Notre Dame employs just over 4,000.

    Here’s the rundown on the top 10 largest employers:

    University of Notre Dame: 4,174
    South Bend Community School Corp: 3,400
    Memorial Health System: 3,094
    Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center, Inc.: 3,030
    AM General: 2,360
    Honeywell: 1,840
    St. Joseph County: 1,631
    Indiana University South Bend: 1,481
    Martin’s Super Markets: 1,443
    City of South Bend: 1,342

  6. Sorry – I just found this site while doing some research on the Eddy Street commons, so I’m a few months late. But, for the benefit of anyone who happens to read this in the future, the previous comments by Jonathon are ridiculous. Notre Dame is its own municipal entity – it is not actually “in” South Bend. If you ever mailed anything to someone there, you’d notice that you mail it to NOTRE DAME, IN, zip code 46556. That is because ND has its own post office, as well as a power plant, water source, police and fire departments, and infrastructure. As a result, ND does not pay municipal taxes to South Bend because it is not a part of South Bend. Likewise, South Bend does not “support” Notre Dame because Notre Dame has its own municipal utilities. It has been this way since 1842. To complain about it makes no more sense than to complain that property owners in Mishawaka do not pay taxes to South Bend on that property.

    Now, of course, ND does not pay sales tax and other state and federal taxes because of its nonprofit status. This is true of every other university in the state. You can discuss the general merits of this all you like, but that does not change the fact that Notre Dame neither contributes to, nor takes from, the South Bend municipal government.

  7. I think you need to look at the bigger picture here. Having a world-class university–one that is in the top 20 of the country has to be viewed as an advantage and a draw to the city of South Bend, not to mention its national sports program. As an example, according to the media, a Notre Dame home football weekend brings 8-10 million dollars per weekend in local revenues to the community. Then consider the non-economic value of the community: professors doing research that alter health care and medical delivery not just for Indiana but the entire country, social programs funded by the university in terms of dollars and volunteer support from some of the best and brightest collegians across the country that enhance the well-being of the citizens of South Bend and ultimately the renewal projects in home development and modernization of some of the most depleted and abandoned neighborhoods throughout the Midwest. Most tersely, Notre Dame has put South Bend on the map. Just note the visitors who come to South Bend at any given time, including a sitting President. Any city would be proud to be home to such a nationally recognized university. Just stop for a minute, and imagine where South Bend would be without Notre Dame–much like South Bend without Studebaker in the 50=60’s. Count your blessings!

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