Central to the bill’s response to the place problem is the authorization of $10 billion over five years to create 20 geographically distributed regional technology and innovation hubs. Reserved for areas “that are not leading technology centers,” the hubs will focus major investment surges toward up-and-coming tech ecosystems in order to expand U.S. innovation capacity, accelerate technology development, and support job creation. As a group and at scale, the hubs are a serious bid to counter excess concentration and nudge new places onto the U.S. growth map.
To me this screams Grand Junction. Something like this can't be dropped in Lamar or Beaver Utah. There needs to be a sizeable professional workforce and a decent University. At the same time, it needs to be a location hours away from any existing technology hub to qualify. In other words, not too big, not much of a tech/research industry. But close, on the edge of being able to become one.
That's 500 million to create a regional center. That's enough money to get something up and running in Grand Junction. Especially if the State and City kick in what they can including free land, etc.
And the pay-off? A lot of very well paying high tech jobs. Colorado Mesa University will improve and become a center for research and education in the specialties of the center. There will be spin-off start-ups. And all that brings in a lot of supportive jobs, everything from more home sales to additional coffee shops.
The Center for...
To be successful it will need to be a specialized center. Try for too much and all you have is some general research that doesn't bring experts, does not accomplish much, and is unlikely to get funding. But focusing on something critical, something that can leverage expertise elsewhere in Colorado, and promise useful results - that will get funding.
I think it should be one of the two following areas of focus:
First, batteries and the electrical grid. Officially, everything from when the electrons leave the generator plant to when the electrons arrive at the homes and businesses consuming the power. The two big focuses are batteries - both designing & manufacturing them and the power grid which is presently held together with spit and baling wire.
The battery part is a natural for Colorado as a large part of it is finding and extracting the minerals needed to manufacturer the batteries. It's also something that can be done in partnership with the School of Mines and NREL among others. So nearby expertise. As a Colorado Center all this can be brought together.
The second possibility is water. Everything from the law (which would require Mesa U. to add a law school) to distribution to figuring out how needs to have their allocation reduced or eliminated. Colorado is a natural here because it's the headlands of the Colorado river, our state itself has been working to balance the trade-offs between farmers, tourism, mining, and urban needs.
Either way
Finally I think the proposal for this should be worked up for two outcomes. Outcome 1 is it is funded with the 500M from the feds. But outcome 2 is it is not funded. In that case, this is still a great idea. So it gets started smaller/cheaper. But is is started. Because these problems need solutions and we can have well paid people in Grand Junction be the ones to solve the problems.
