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http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/inde.../post_160.html

Back to life: Kettering University leaders revisit plans to turn old General Motors site into a 'technology park'
Published: Friday, February 04, 2011, 9:12 AM Updated: Friday, February 04, 2011, 10:14 AM
Beata Mostafavi | Flint Journal By Beata Mostafavi | Flint Journal

FLINT, Michigan — Inside a glass-walled building in a west-side neighborhood, two companies are doing research they believe could help change Flint.

The first two tenants in Kettering University’s $3.4 million Innovation Center bring hope to a bigger vision for the barren block of land off Chevrolet Avenue.

The dream goes something like this: a mecca for inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs testing ideas in new laboratories. Four, five, even six more buildings on what are now vacant lots.

Possibly, a new place for students to live. Or a coffee shop that draws people from the Flint River Trail for smoothies and ice cream. Or a retail center.

It would be a bustling place for companies of a future Flint that would bring a former General Motors site back to life.

They would call it the Kettering Technology Park.

“Ten years ago, we didn’t think it was a real possibility on campus,” said Susan Bolt, Kettering’s vice president for administration and finance, looking over the 2007 master plan for the property, which took years to acquire from GM.

“I envision an economic engine that allows for the transfer of knowledge.”

The Innovation Center marks the first big step of the envisioned tech corridor.

The opening of the building, a nearly six-year-old concept that evolved several times and included false starts, has some campus dreamers giddy about what’s next — even if it’s still years away.

Kettering leaders anticipate the 9,200-square-foot Innovation Center will be full by the end of the year. It still has room for two to four new tenants.

Its first two companies already have put the campus in the spotlight. Swedish Biogas International, the company that has pledged to produce a renewable alternative fuel at a biogas plant in the city, has made the building its headquarters.

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