South Bend and Notre Dame continue to foster symbiotic relationship, leaders say
Feb. 28, 2025
SOUTH BEND — The University of Notre Dame and the city of South Bend work to continue their relationship to further both of their successes.
The South Bend Regional Chamber invited University of Notre Dame Vice President and James E. Rohr Director of Athletics Pete Bevacqua to the 2025 Salute to Business to introduce him to the business leaders.
Nearly 900 representatives and customers of businesses of all kinds — Journeyman Distillery, Place To Be Me, Southfield Village and Masterbilt — took a few hours off mid-day Thursday to toast their successes, congratulate others and spend time networking at Century Center.
Jeff Rea, president and CEO of the South Bend Regional Chamber, called the luncheon a celebration of everything that’s happening in our business community.
“It’s stories of inspiration that kind of get other people thinking about the little difference that they can make,” Rea said.
The Regional Chamber’s smallest business has one employee and their biggest has 6,000, Rea said.
Amazon Web Services received the economic impact award after announcing last year that they’d be investing $11 billion in Indiana, creating at least 1,000 jobs. This is the largest capital investment in Indiana’s history. Amazon also promised to contribute up to $7 million in support to road infrastructure improvements being built near the company’s planned development. The St. Joseph County Police Department confirmed Amazon was paying the department to allocate more resources to the New Carlisle area.
Bevacqua, a former third-chairman for NBC sports, started his journey as a student at Notre Dame — graduating in 1993 — before getting his law degree at Georgetown University. After that, he took a job at the United States Golf Association, which he said, “turned his life around.”
As Bevacqua came back to Notre Dame in March 2024, he took part in extending the university’s partnership with NBC and developed a framework with the College Football Management Committee to solidify a television contract with ESPN.
“The ability to come back to Notre Dame, in this role at this time in such unprecedented change and movement in the college sports landscape, … to have a hand in helping navigate us through this and preserve what is our north star — the athletic department, which is the student-athlete experience.”
The modern landscape of college sports is harder than ever and harder to maintain, Bevacqua said. However, he said, the opportunity to be a student-athlete is going to differentiate Notre Dame.
The university has 739 student-athletes, he said.
Notre Dame student-athletes receive “every resource imaginable,” he said, listing coaches, facilities, strength and conditioning, sports data and sports science, adding the university provides the same opportunity for resources for academics.
Notre Dame football is part of the DNA of Notre Dame, he said.
“When Notre Dame football is doing well, just everything is better,” Bevacqua said.
The 2024-2025 season was the first year the College Football Playoff was expanded from four teams to include 12 teams.
“The business of college sports is bigger than it’s ever been,” and “college football has become such a big business,” Bevacqua said.
The university hosted College Gameday with ESPN as the Irish competed — and won — in the College Football Playoff game against Indiana University on Dec. 20. The Tribune previously reported that the city received an economic boost from the December game, with a restaurant saying their weekly beer and liquor order was up 15% from that time last year.
The university also gained by participating in the championship overall. But, Bevacqua said, they might not be able to play in a national championship game every year, but “we’re going to keep knocking on that door.”
“This year was not a one-off,” Bevacqua said. “This year was the new norm.”
The Irish pocketed a $6 million payday for making the CFP championship game following their Orange Bowl win over No. 6 Penn State on Jan. 9, the Tribune reported, and received $20 million payout in CFP performance bonuses, which is the max an independent program can receive per Front Office Sports.
Notre Dame’s future plan is to build a stronger relationship with the city of South Bend.
“Notre Dame is a better university when South Bend is doing well,” Bevacqua said. As the university recruits staff or coaches, they want to be able to tell people that South Bend is a good place to live, he said.
South Bend Mayor James Mueller said the relationship between the city and university started to strengthen under Mayor Joe Kernan and Rev. Edward "Monk" Malloy’s leadership and it has grown only stronger since then.
“There’s transformation happening in our community and our momentum is in no small part to us all working together,” Mueller said.
The city-university relationship has never been stronger, Bevacqua said, to which Mueller added, “We hope it continues to grow.”
“These opportunities are good for South Bend and good for the region,” Mueller said.
Right now, the university is focused on integrating with downtown South Bend.
Serving as an economic and cultural tie between the university and city, the 1.5-mile Link Trail opened in November 2024. Connecting “these centers of culture and commerce will create a more vibrant community,” Mueller said in a press release. The university paid for about a third of the project, Mueller said.
The university accounts for the city’s largest tourist attraction, Mueller said, adding that the “special part” is that the university leans in further to invest directly in the community.