Photo: Digital Equity/Eagle Eye Media
10,000 sq ft Fiber Smart House will serve as workforce, educational training hub
The City of Gary and national telecommunications development firm Digital Equity™, LLC broke ground on the Gary Fiber Smart House on Wednesday, officially launching the $8 million tech hub that will serve as a workforce and educational training site for the community.
The groundbreaking was attended by Indiana Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch, U.S. Congressman Frank Mrvan and Gary Mayor Jerome Prince, among other dignitaries and organizers.
Set to open its doors in Q1 of 2025, the 10,000 square-foot Fiber Smart House will be available to the public as a state-of-the-art technology workforce and educational training hub for residents, as well as a network operations center and fiber access point for large networks. It will offer business owners the opportunity to incubate and obtain resources to grow, create a community of nonprofits and partner with higher education institutions to build pipelines for job placement in the tech sector. The Fiber Smart House will also offer a variety of critical services for Gary residents, including security and public safety emergency services.
The Fiber Smart House is the first step in Gary’s concerted, multi-phase effort to create a tech community in Northwest Indiana. Once completed, it will sit along an interstate fiberoptic network known as the Quantum Corridor, which will bring greater broadband access to Gary and other communities. The Quantum Corridor will also open doors for quantum computing research and capabilities across the region.
Opened in 1910, Gary Union Station was formerly designated one of the 10 Most Endangered Places in Indiana and was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. The rehabilitation of the once bustling depot has been the vision of Tyrell Anderson, local real estate renovator, preservationist and President of the Decay Devils, which owns the building.
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