City Plans $75 Million Manufacturing Training Center at Daley College

Artist's rendering of $75 million advanced training center at Daley College. | City Colleges of Chicago

Chicago, IL, June 7, 2016 -- City Colleges of Chicago is planning a new manufacturing center at Richard J. Daley College on Chicago’s South Side that will train students for technology-driven manufacturing jobs.

The advanced manufacturing center will add 105,000 square feet on city-owned land south of the community college’s campus at 76th Street and Pulaski Road. The addition will also include a 30,000-square-foot bridge that will link the main Daley College building with the new manufacturing center.

Students will have access to state-of-the-art equipment to train them to solve real-world problems. The advanced center will also serve as a quality control testing for small to mid-sized area manufacturers.

The city projects that over the next decade, an estimated 14,000 manufacturing jobs will be coming to the Chicago region.

“With nearly 40 percent of Chicago's students enrolling in college today, it is critical that they have access to a college education that will prepare them for the growing job industries of today,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a written statement. “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.”

The manufacturing center is being designed in collaboration with City College’s industry partners, including UI labs to simulate a 21st century manufacturing environment. City Colleges will work with the Chicago Public Building Commission in managing the $75 million project. The commission is poised to approve the project at its June board meeting.

“Manufacturing companies like ours are looking for employees with a command of welding, quality control and root cause analysis, and 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,” said Kathleen Dudek, of Dudek & Bock Spring Manufacturing Company, a City Colleges College to Careers partner, located on the city’s West Side.

Since the debut of College to Careers in 2011, City Colleges faculty and staff have partnered with industry leaders to design curriculum and facilities preparing students for jobs in fast growing and evolving fields.

The Daley College modernization project comes on the heels of Olive-Harvey as the city’s hub for education in transportation, distribution and logistics, a dedicated child development lab space underway at Truman College, City Colleges' Center for Excellence in education, human and natural sciences, and the completion of the new health sciences campus at Malcolm X College.

The advanced manufacturing center at Daley College is expected to be completed in 2018.