$9.5M boost for businesses

Detroit --A powerful, well-funded Kansas City-based nonprofit announced a partnership Monday that will dedicate $9.5 million over the next three years to help southeast Michigan auto suppliers update their businesses and fledgling startups get a leg up in the recessionary economy.

The commitment from the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, was announced at TechTown, the small-business incubator north of Wayne State University's campus in Detroit.

Lesa Mitchell, vice president for advancing innovation at the foundation, said the multimillion-dollar commitment will help existing firms retool and establish hundreds of new businesses employing potentially thousands of Michiganians. The funding will also allow the foundation to expand its well-established FastTrac business development program into Detroit.

The program, which has helped launch thousands of small, sustainable businesses around the world, provides entrepreneurial training for potential business owners.

"We view this as a chance to implement this program in an area that can really use it," Mitchell said. "And how could we resist a living laboratory?"

The FastTrac program is expected to educate roughly 800 entrepreneurs a year, creating as many as 1,200 businesses throughout the three-year commitment. Another 150 minority auto suppliers will be trained under a separate Urban Entrepreneurship Program that will help business owners identify new markets to which they can offer their services, including growth industries such as green energy.

A number of former auto suppliers has started the transition to new markets. Some have dedicated their research, development and manufacturing prowess to developing new product lines such as medical devices; others have moved to a growing role in the state's burgeoning wind energy sector, which includes the manufacturing of equipment that harvests energy from wind farms.

The $9.5 million, three-year commitment by the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, which itself is a consortium of 10 philanthropic organizations -- including the Ford and Kresge foundations -- comes in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation and seeks to help stimulate a reinvention of the region's economy.

A number of local politicians and economic boosters were out for Monday's announcement, including George Jackson, who heads the Detroit Economic Growth Corp.

"This is an extremely positive development for the city of Detroit and southeast Michigan," Jackson said. "Entrepreneurship is the answer to the transition that's been thrust upon us. We'd like to see more of it."

Monday's announcement nets a particularly big win for TechTown, the startup business incubator grown out of a partnership between Wayne State, Henry Ford Health System and General Motors Corp. The Kauffman Foundation's local programs will be based at TechTown, as will many businesses grown out of the program, netting the facility roughly $5 million in investment over the three years.

nhurst@detnews.com">nhurst@detnews.com (313) 222-2293