Mackinac Policy Conference 2013 (Update: Macomb County & Defense Industry Sector Expansion via MEDC Grant)

Macomb Co. wants more defense work

By Tom Walsh Detroit Free Press Business Columnist

   MACKINAC ISLAND — Ma-comb County will use a $231,000 grant from the State of Michigan to launch an effort to grow existing defense industry businesses and attract new ones to southeast Michigan, County Executive Mark Hackel said Wednesday prior to the start of the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference.

   “We’re the defense capital of the Midwest now, and we want to be the defense capital of the country,” Hackel said of the corridor of military suppliers clustered in Macomb.

   In the past decade, he said, 1,600 Michigan companies have fulfilled U.S. defense contracts worth more than $46 billion. Hackel said Macomb companies receive about two-thirds of that work.

   Activities funded by the grant will include a 60-second video aligned with the state’s Pure Michigan campaign that showcases the state’s defense and homeland security industry; a new website; efforts to create a robotics cluster of firms, and facilitating three events to promote hiring veterans.

   In addition to the new grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.’s Collaborative Development Council’s regional projects program, Macomb has posted messages this week on two highway billboards along I-75 on the route from Detroit to Mackinac.

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These billboards promoting Macomb County went up this week on I-75 near Birch Run and Indian River.