Purdue University Fort Wayne’s new facility aligns with goal of making Fort Wayne a Top-10 Music City

Back in November 2021, Greater Fort Wayne Inc. put together its Allen County Together Plan and one of its goals was to make Fort Wayne a Top-10 Music City by 2031.

The report noted that “Increasingly, Fort Wayne is becoming known as an appealing place to live for artists, musicians, and other creative professionals. If local stakeholders want to embrace creative talent and its economic potential, music should become a central facet of local arts and culture development.”

The report also noted that Indiana already has a number of musical assets embedded such as the Middle Waves Music Festival, GearFest, and Sweetwater Sound, as well as a number of successful venues like the Sweetwater Performance pavilion, the Embassy Theatre, and the Clyde Theatre, not to mention many other smaller venues for local acts to utilize. 

In its aim to assist with this goal, Purdue University Fort Wayne broke ground on September 10 for its new $25 million, 26,000 square foot Surack-Sweetwater Music Industry Building on campus. The building should be open in time for the beginning of the fall 2026 semester, and will allow space for students to work on their music.

In an article on the school’s website, clinical assistant professor of music and director of the popular music, music industry, and music technology programs in Purdue University Fort Wayne’s School of Music, John Buteyn, was quoted about the building, saying, “The new building is going to have a great economic impact on Fort Wayne. We’re going to have state-of-the-art facilities, which will draw music lovers of the younger generation who want to study this—and hopefully keep people in this area who are doing more in the music scene. It’s just like a trickle effect where we have a bigger program now, more students will graduate now, and a lot of times you see those students sticking around the region because they have connections there. It’s a good place to start, and we’ll continue to seed this.”

The new building will include a variety of areas utilizing top of the line, new equipment for musicians and students to use. It is also expected that this new building will have a positive economic and financial impact on northeast Indiana, which was a large part of the reason the Indiana General Assembly decided to participate in the funding of the project.

John O’Connell, who serves as the dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, was also quoted about the building, saying, “It’s my estimation that this new building will be a national attraction for students because it will be state-of-the-art, and we’ll have a facility unlike anyone else in the country. We’ll be attracting students from all over the country, which will impact our goal to be a Top 10 city.”

The Gold Top Music Group, and the music programs at Purdue University Fort Wayne, have noted a steady growth over the past half decade, and expect the new building to provide the necessary space for students and musicians to spread out and try new things artistically, according to Buteyn. The building will also work to deepen the relationship between the university and Sweetwater. O’Connell also noted that the new building will let other School of Music students take advantage of the equipment housed therein.

Purdue University Fort Wayne’s School of Music has had a presence on Sweetwater’s corporate campus since 2018, and this new facility will serve as a boon for Fort Wayne’s hopes of being a Top 10 music city, according to education resource manager for Sweetwater, Nathan Heironimus.

Heironimus routinely works with Purdue University Fort Wayne students and had this to say: “All of this is to keep up with the fast pace and ever-changing world of music. This new building won’t just serve as a shell, but also the fabric for the fire in the belly of each student chasing their dreams in music. Sweetwater is eager to see the next version of success take shape, as this new home serves as an even better learning environment for the upcoming generations of students in music. This is going to pour even more music into Fort Wayne for a long time to come, contributing to the fulfillment of this mission.”

More information about Purdue University Fort Wayne can be found on the school’s website.