Crain's Chicago Business - $10 Million Grant to Digital Lab: First of Many?

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Chicago's brand new digital manufacturing lab won't even move into its quarters until this winter, but the center today received the first chunk of what officials are hoping will be a flood of federal and commercial grants.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., are announcing that the lab -- formally known as the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute -- has received $10 million in defense funds to speed the development of military vehicles.

Specifically, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency grant will go toward better use of digital technology to produce better and more reliable planes, trucks and other vehicles more quickly.

Several Midwestern firms located within a short drive of Chicago have been major suppliers of military vehicles in the past. My colleague John Pletz notes that Lisle's Navistar is a big defense contractor, that AM General provided Hummers from its South Bend plant and that Oshkosh Corp. built army trucks in southern Wisconsin. And, of course, Chicago's Boeing Co. is one of the top makers of military aircraft in the world.

"The digital lab is establishing itself as an economic driver in Chicago even before its doors are open," Mr. Durbin said in a statement. "We worked so hard to bring the lab to Illinois precisely in order to attract cutting-edge research and design like the adaptive-vehicle-maker funding announced today."

Added Mr. Durbin, who chairs the Senate's defense appropriations subcommittee, "I know these are just the first of many innovative projects that will call Chicago home, and I look forward to the jobs and economic growth they will bring."

The $10 million is in addition to the $70 million in funding promised when the Obama administration selected Chicago for the new research facility earlier this year.

The grant "is a huge win for the new digital manufacturing lab," Mr. Emanuel said in a statement. "It shows that our efforts to establish key industries here and create opportunities for future job growth in manufacturing are already paying off."

The lab recently signed a lease for 94,000 square feet in a former window factory on Goose Island. Work on converting the structure is set to begin this fall, with the lab moving in during the first quarter of 2015.

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