SOUTH BEND — The University of Notre Dame announced Aug. 5 that it would turn the former South Bend Tribune building at 225 W. Colfax Ave. into The Downtown South Bend Tech and Talent Hub.
This follows the university’s purchase of the historic building in December 2023, after it had sat vacant since November 2019, when the newspaper temporarily moved its operations to Union Station and then to its current location in Studebaker Building 113 in August 2020.
Here are five things to know about the building:
The Tribune’s fourth home
Founded March 9, 1872, by Alfred B. Miller and Elmer Crockett, The Tribune moved into its fourth — and longest-lasting — home following the publication of the April 23, 1921, newspaper.
Construction began with an official groundbreaking Dec. 1, 1919, on the building at 225 W. Colfax Ave.
The first edition rolled off its new, 60-ton Goss high-speed presses on April 25, 1921 — there wasn’t an April 24 edition because The Tribune didn’t publish on Sundays then.
The presses could be seen through the 125,00-square-foot building’s first-floor windows along Lafayette Boulevard. The Tribune made at least five additions to the building over the years.
In January 2019, New York-based GateHouse Media bought The Tribune from Schurz Communications Inc., the local company descended from the newspaper’s founders. In November 2019, GateHouse completed its merger with Gannett, retaining the latter’s corporate name.
The Tribune occupied the building for 98 years.
WSBT began on the Colfax building’s third floor
The Tribune founded the radio station WGAZ, whose call letters stood for World’s Greatest Auto Zone, in 1922 and later renamed it WSBT. The company made the building’s third floor the headquarters for its broadcast operations.
Schurz’s WSBT Radio Group would eventually grow to include WSBT-FM (96.1), WSBT-AM (960), WNSN-FM (Sunny 101.5), WHFB-FM (New Country 99.9) and WZOC-FM (Z94.3).
In 1951-52, the company founded WSBT-TV, also located on the third floor of the building.
The broadcast operations moved to 300 W. Jefferson Blvd. in 1956. WNIT Public Television opened its new studios and headquarters there in May 2010, after Schurz donated the building to the nonprofit following the television and radio stations’ 2008 move to Schurz’s newly constructed headquarters at 1301 E. Douglas Road, Mishawaka.
In September 2015, Gray Television purchased all of Schurz’s seven TV stations and 13 radio stations for $442.5 million. Because Gray already owned WNDU-TV, it sold WSBT-TV to Sinclair Broadcast Corp. in October 2015 in adherence to FCC regulations that prohibited a single company from owning more than one television station in a market.
In November 2015, it was announced that when the Gray-Schurz transaction closed, Schurz would transfer its South Bend-area radio stations to Mid-West Family Broadcast Group.
The Tribune opens a new press building
In 1993, The Tribune replaced its 1921 presses with new Koenig & Bauer presses from Germany. To do so, it built a new, $26 million printing facility at the corner of LaSalle Avenue and Lafayette Boulevard, connected by a skyway to its building on Colfax.
The Tribune razed its former annex building in 1992 to construct the press building. A mural painted in 1989 by local husband-and-wife artists David Blodgett and Linda Crimson that depicted South Bend history adorned the LaSalle Avenue-facing side of the annex building.
The Tribune last printed at that location on June 27, 2017, when Schurz outsourced printing to a facility near Grand Rapids. Gannett now prints The Tribune at its Detroit-area facility.
South Bend City Church agreed in April 2022 to buy the press building from Schurz and reopened it in March 2024 for services and other events.
A unique ZIP code
The Tribune had its own ZIP code: 46626.
According to zip-codes.com, the United States Postal Service assigned a “unique ZIP code” to the building on Colfax Avenue. A unique ZIP code “is reserved for businesses, government agencies, universities, or other entities” that receive a large amount of mail, the website said.
The next edition
The Lilly Endowment awarded a $30 million matching grant to Notre Dame to build its Downtown South Bend Tech and Talent Hub in the former Tribune building on Colfax Avenue.
A press release said the new center will include renovated research and innovation space that will allow the university to collaborate with industry to advance applied research in areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence and advanced computing.
In partnership with South Bend City Church, the Tech and Talent Hub will offer community programming in The Tribune’s former press building. Holy Cross College also will offer leadership and ethics training, and the facility will offer drop-in services for local entrepreneurs.
Work on the project could get underway in 2025.
Email Tribune staff writer Andrew S. Hughes at ahughes@sbtinfo.com.
