A 22,000-square-foot, three-story tech center, called The Forge, is starting to take shape next to Bloomington’s business incubator, The Dimension Mill. Construction workers on a recent Tuesday afternoon carried building materials and operated machinery. They are expected to soon install drywall, which lay in packages on the building’s floor. Late this year, the office could welcome its first tenants.
Local officials have placed high hopes in the structure: It is to help establish an innovation hub, offer space for growth-stage companies, provide recent IU grads with employment opportunities and tech companies with access to an educated workforce and customers including the U.S. military at Crane.
“It’s going to be a great building. I can’t wait for it to be finished,” said John Fernandez, Bloomington’s former mayor who now oversees the project as part of his role with the Mill, as senior vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships.
Jennifer Pearl, president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corp., said The Forge will help create a high-tech employment cluster that, much like the local life sciences cluster, will “diversify the local economy.”
Carol Rogers, director of the Indiana Business Research Center, said she believes the city’s effort can succeed, in part because of broad support from state and federal governments — which helped fund the building — Indiana University, Ivy Tech, Crane, and the potential for faculty and students to become part of an “innovation supply chain.”