SOUTH BEND ― U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg returned to his hometown Wednesday morning to tout the infrastructure investments of the Biden administration while also admiring the continuing development of the region.
Buttigieg met with some of the 268 electrical apprentices at IBEW Local 153 at Western Avenue and Peppermint Road to learn about the unprecedented demand for electricians and other skilled trades that’s resulted from the surge in U.S. investments over the past few years.
The White House recently issued a release indicating that, since Biden took office, private sector investment in clean energy and manufacturing in the United States has surpassed $1 trillion.
IBEW officials said they’ve felt the positive jolt from the public sector investment that’s catalyzed investment by companies here and across the country.
“It’s been a historic opportunity to modernize our nation’s roads, bridges, airports and so much more,” Joe Gambill, training director for Local 153, told a group of about 150 gathered to listen to a chat involving former South Bend Mayor Buttigieg and his successor, James Mueller.
“The IBEW and building trades have seen a huge change in our area,” Gambill said. “We have over 38 projects that qualify under this law. The largest is our GM battery plant, and this has led to multiple data services moving into our area.”
Projects underway in St. Joseph County
Gambill said that about 2,000 union electricians are currently working on projects in St. Joseph County and that about 900 of those had to be brought in from outside the area because of the considerable number of projects underway.
Chief among those currently is the $11 billion data center complex being built by Amazon Web Services between South Bend and New Carlisle, but Microsoft also has purchased land for data centers on the east side of the county, and it’s planning a $1 billion facility in LaPorte.
In addition, officials from Verbio, the German owner of the ethanol plant on the south side of South Bend, also have cited incentives from the Biden administration for the $230 million in investments it’s making at the local plant so that it can produce natural gas as well as ethanol.
Construction on the $3.5 billion EV battery plant, which is being built by GM and its partner, Samsung SDI , is expected to begin moving vertically in 2025 as most of the work has been completed extending utilities and building drainage basins.
That plant is ultimately expected to employ about 1,600 and should begin production toward the end of 2026 while the Amazon facilities are expected to employ 1,000 direct and contract workers with hiring expected to commence in 2025.
“The Biden administration has been empowering workers and building a pipeline of projects that will be around for years and decades to come,” Gambill said.
Back in the Bend
Returning to South Bend for the first time in an official capacity, Buttigieg said he’s extremely proud of how far the city has come since he joined the Biden administration, pointing out that the city had double-digit unemployment and too much housing to support its shrinking population when he took office in 2012.
Today, its population is growing and it needs more housing to support the expanding workforce that’s going to be needed at the battery plant, the data centers and numerous other projects planned or underway in the region.
Buttigieg, who now lives in Traverse City, Mich., with his husband, Chastan, and their two children, said he hasn’t formulated plans for the immediate future outside of Washington, D.C., but he wanted to visit South Bend one last time as transportation secretary.
“One of the last things I wanted to do was come back here to South Bend,” he said. “I wanted a chance to celebrate and reflect on everything that has changed and everything that’s become possible.”
The city’s rebirth, he said, is repeatable in cities of all sizes across the country because of the renaissance of manufacturing and infrastructure ― particularly in the industrial Midwest.
“It is my hope that ideology and partisanship will not pollute the importance and the unity that we ought to have around getting big things done,” he said, pointing out that there are about 66,000 projects planned or underway across the country because of the initiatives of the Biden administration.
Credit for Biden still to come
Despite the impact of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, Mueller asked Buttigieg why voters didn’t give the president enough credit for the infrastructure investments and turning the economy around following the pandemic.
“We’re a little a victim of our own scale of progress,” he said. “When you do 66,000 projects … it doesn’t have the same focus because there are so many things.”
In addition, he said, most of the projects are still underway or in the planning stages, meaning that new jobs from those projects ― for example Amazon and GM ― might not be fully felt for years to come.
“I’m a little concerned that some of the people who tried to block this legislation, and this strategy, will be among the first to appear at the ribbon cuttings to celebrate the projects getting completed,” he said.
Looking at the progress that’s been made with more projects in the pipeline, Buttigieg admitted he has concerns that some of the progress in stimulating investment in construction, manufacturing and other sectors might be undone.
“A bunch of decisions are about to made which will either develop or destroy the progress that’s now underway,” he said. “It’s about what happens next.”
Email Tribune staff writer Ed Semmler at esemmler@sbtinfo.com.