By Rick Blumenberg /
Mayor Rahm Emanuel
announced today that Chicago has won the bid for a new digital manufacturing
institute. Public and private funds will combine to make it possible and the
windy lakeshore city beat out Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other
equally high tech bidders. One reason they won was because Chicago exceeded the
requirement of equally matching the $70 million in government funds. Private
sources from the Chicago area came up with $250 million in matching funds.
Could Chicago
become the new Silicon Lakeshore? Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill thinks so. He said,
"We had to over-perform to make sure it
was not only a good grab, but the best, so the president, the White House and
everybody else can look at it with a straight face and say, 'Of course it's
Illinois.'"
Some people are calling it the new Silicon Valley,
but Chicago’s not a valley! What we’re talking about is the new Silicon Lakeshore—an emphasis like this will impact the entire
world of Lake Michigan’s Lakeshore from Wisconsin to Southwest Michigan and
radiate out into the offshore areas as well, from Rockford, to
Champaign-Urbana, home of the University of Illinois, a major player in the
success of the Chicago bid. And who knows, but my guess is we here in Bridgman,
the City on the Lake, home of lots of Chicago lovers, may also be involved.
Exciting things are also happening in nearby
South Bend, Indiana, where the University of Notre Dame is breaking new ground
in the field of Nano Technology. The City of South Bend is their enthusiastic
partner. Together they have created Innovation and Ignition Parks in an attempt
to combine the educational expertise of the University of Notre Dame and the
manufacturing expertise/abilities of South Bend area leaders to make the area a
hub for nanotechnology.
“It’s off to a great start,” said Arnold Phifer,
External Relations Director for Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and
Technology. “It is starting to spin-off companies and move some of the
technologies out of the lab into Innovation Park and then ultimately to
Ignition Park. Businesses who
can’t afford their own labs are coming to South Bend to work at Notre Dame’s
facilities.”[i]
Our economy has gone through some real
struggles lately. Partly because of the economic downturn, but a great part of
it is the reality of the manufacturing change from the old style hardware
production to the new style Digital and Nano manufacturing. It doesn’t all have
to happen on the East and West Coasts. The Midwest’s Third Coast of marvelous Lake
Michigan, where those of us who know it, love to live, may well be the new
happening place.
As for me I look forward to being a part of
the new Silicon Lakeshore if only as an enthusiastic cheerleader.
I’m Rick Blumenberg and that’s My View from Tanner Creek—a small, but delightful tributary of
beautiful Lake Michigan.
[i] Quoted by Tony Spehar, “Is Nanotechnology still in South Bend’s
Future?” ABC57 News,
October 13, 2013
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