CHICAGO — To help Chicagoans fill needed positions in the skilled-labor industry, the city will build a $75 million "advanced manufacturing center" at Richard J. Daley College in West Lawn, the city announced Monday.
The "state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing facility" is for city college students enrolled in the College to Careers program, which seeks to train students for positions in growing industries.
City officials are anticipating 14,000 manufacturing jobs to come to the area within a decade. Initiatives like the College to Careers program will hopefully provide the workforce with the knowledge to fill coming jobs.
"With a new state-of-the-art manufacturing center at Daley College and other investments to strengthen our City Colleges, we will unlock thousands of opportunities each year for our students to seize the jobs that are being created right here," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.
The 105,000 square-foot center will be ready by fall 2018, the city said in a release. It will be built on the south side of 76th Street, just south of the existing campus. The new building will have the capacity to serve an additional 3,8000 students a year, the city said.
Students will be equipped with modern equipment and manufacturing practices, the city said. The center will even serve as a "test site" for local small-to-mid-sized manufacturers.
Started in 2011, the College to Careers initiative has trained high school graduates in skills like welding and pipe-fitting, fields where many experts say workers are in high demand. Each of the city's seven colleges will house a College to Careers program, the city said.
Daley College, 7500 S. Pulaski Road, will be the advanced manufacturing program's headquarters. Olive Harvey College in Roseland houses the transportation, logistics and distribution program. The Near West Side's Malcolm X College in January added a health sciences campus.
Kathleen Dudek, owner of a West Side metal fabrication company, said modern workers not only need to know how to weld, but also know "quality control and root cause analysis," she said in a statement.
"The simulated environment in Daley's new advanced manufacturing center will give students a head start on developing the manufacturing and critical thinking skills that we look for in successful employees," Dudek said.
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