You might not call it love-hate, but the relationship between Notre Dame and South Bend has always mixed wariness of each other’s faults and a pragmatic recognition of Notre Dame’s role as a major employer and all-around economic engine. Football weekends, for instance, pump millions of dollars into the local economy, but people who live near campus and don’t have football tickets know that game days and the traffic mess they create are something simply to be tolerated.
“The very fact that we had to pass an ordinance to create a community-campus advisory coalition to assure communication on a regular basis about neighborhood issues such as game-day problems says it all,” says Kathleen Cekanski-Farrand ’73J.D., South Bend Common Council attorney.
The relationship is soon to change in a dramatic way that could not have been imagined even a few years ago. The key to the transformation will be Innovation Park at Notre Dame, for which ground is to be broken yet this summer. The research facility has the potential, in the near future, to transform the University and the surrounding community into one of the great economic developments of this generation, not just in South Bend or the Midwest but in the United States and, perhaps, the world.
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