South Bend’s Momentum Entrepreneurship Hub is officially open, allowing a vacant building to become a hub for startups. Photo from Momentum South Bend.

News Release

SOUTH BEND — A once-blighted property in downtown South Bend has been reborn as a hub for innovation.

More than 100 people gathered Friday, Sept. 19 to mark the ribbon cutting of the Momentum Entrepreneurship Hub, a $12 million project designed to serve startups, remote workers and entrepreneurs across the South Bend-Elkhart region. The redevelopment transformed a long-vacant building that previously hosted weather amnesty services into a modern facility aimed at fostering collaboration and growth.

City leaders, investors and regional partners joined founder Kris Priemer and his team to celebrate the years-long effort.

The project includes offices and dedicated spaces for programs like Start Up South Bend-Elkhart, which also inaugurated its new office inside the facility Friday, Sept. 19.

Funding for the project included $1.1 million from Indiana’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, part of the state’s strategy to support entrepreneurship as a driver of long-term economic development. Officials with the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce praised the project as both an economic and visual improvement to downtown. Regional advocates noted that the hub provides a much-needed home base for builders of all kinds.

With its doors now open, the facility is being framed not as an endpoint, but as a launchpad for new ventures.