SOUTH BEND — Two new businesses have moved into Notre Dame’s Innovation Park, SlipStream and RemSense. Both are high-tech startup companies that moved in this month. The bigger picture is the future of the area’s economy, as South Bend tries to attract high tech jobs.

“It’s a very good environment to develop this system,” said Peter Bauer, a part owner of SlipStream. The company is developing a prototype for a new hybrid vehicle.

“The interaction with other companies that are here, the closeness of Notre Dame and the entire concept is just very conducive to our type of work,” Bauer said.

For SlipStream, Innovation Park is just the beginning. The ultimate goal is to develop a hybrid system that will be mass produced.

The support provided at Innovation Park is working for Bauer’s company, right now, and seems to be attracting more businesses.

“What we build is not only a facility but it’s the services and the support here,” Innovation Park CEO David Brenner said.

“That’s why they (the companies) are coming. It’s very important they get the type of support that they need at a particular point in time.”

After a company has built itself up, the City of South Bend hopes some of those startups will relocate at Ignition Park, staying within the community.

“They’re (Ignition Park) obviously the long-term space, our space is the transformational,” Brenner said.

“The idea here is that companies begin here (Innovation Park), grow here, get their legs under them,” said South Bend Mayor Steven Luecke. “As they’re ready to expand and move on to the next level, then we want to capture them at Ignition Park, to keep those jobs here in our community, keep that investment in our community.”

If those companies do grow out of Innovation Park it is not guaranteed they will stay in South Bend.

“It’s very hard to predict where we will be in one year from now or even half a year from now,” Bauer said. “It depeds on where the technology takes us.”

There are now seven companies housed at Innovation Park.

Innovation Park is only one pipeline for Ignition Park. The city also hopes to attract companies from across the country.

Luecke said just having Ignition Park, with its move-in readiness and infrastructure, is an incentive for companies to stay in South Bend. He added that the city will also provide some tax abatements.

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