Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

The Obama administration has awarded Detroit more than $4 million to help support burgeoning redevelopment of a long-vacant industrial park on the city's east side.

The money will help widen and resurface Georgia Street in an area south of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport. The I-94 Industrial Park is a 200-acre area that the city assembled in recent decades and has long sought to redevelop with manufacturing and suppliers to major manufacturers. But only in recent years have projects come to fruition.

The City of Detroit and the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. received $910,000 from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) to support hiring a two-person team that will work to prepare sites for redevelopment and lure companies looking to locate in Detroit, with a goal of adding 5,000 jobs over the next five years, officials said. The agencies also received nearly $3.2 million to convert Georgia Street into widened, upgraded truck route to keep truck traffic off neighborhood streets in the area.

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Mayor Mike Duggan said the money will permit the city to make the industrial park more attractive to jobs providers and to provide employment opportunities in a neighborhood with the city's highest unemployment rate.

"A big part of why these grants are important is this: We're up against very good suburbs with green space and industrial parks ready to go every time we go to get a warehouse or plant," Duggan said at a news conference Monday. "It's tough competition. And in Detroit, we've got a lot of old infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt. With the EDA grants today, it goes a long way to level the playing field, and that's all we want."

Duggan said it's not just the suburbs the city competes against, but also Mexico, and he hopes to be able to lure Mexican auto parts plants back to the city.

The news conference was held at the LINC logisitics facility, a parts warehouse that supports General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck plant where the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6 and Chevrolet Volt and Impala are built. Linc, part of the Moroun-owned Universal Truckload Services, opened a 540,000-square-foot facility late last year and has hired more than 150 workers, 80% of whom are Detroit residents.

Up next is Flex-N-Gate, a company that is set to break ground later this year on a $95-million, 30-acre facility that will build front ends for Ford vehicles, with 400-600 new jobs.

Assistant U.S. Commerce Secretary Jay Williams, who announced the grants, said Detroit had to compete with other cities for the money and made the case that it would support 600 new jobs and $120 million in private investment.

He said President Barack Obama's administration has remained committed to Detroit, as it came out of the national recession that hammered the city and its automakers. And while Williams defended the administration's economic achievements as among the most robust recoveries in decades, he said, "It's abundantly clear that we have more to do."

City Councilman Scott Benson, whose 3rd District includes the industrial park, said the redevelopment of the area is critical. He said Detroit's recovery depends on bringing jobs to neighborhoods outside of downtown and Midtown.

"We have to have job centers in our neighborhoods, and this is a testament to that," Benson said.

City officials said they expect construction on the road improvements to begin in spring 2017 and wrap up by year's end.

The opening of facilities like LINC have given jobs opportunities to people who've lived in the neighborhood for years and had to drive or take buses far away from the neighborhood to find work.

Raven Harris, 34, a mother of two, said she's deeply appreciative for her unionized job at LINC, which has starting wages of $11-$14 an hour plus benefits. She tearfully said at the news conference that her job has enabled her and her children to move into their own home.

Harris said health had previously made it hard for her to maintain a steady job, but she's happy at LINC, and her health has improved.

"It's one of the best jobs I've ever had," she said.

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.