Industry, government and academic leaders gathered at Cal State Bakersfield Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the award of $6.8 million in state grant money to support a series of aerospace and defense projects in eastern Kern.
The brief event focused on the momentum that appears to be building around an industry speakers said has the potential to support job creation and entrepreneurial interest.
One of the event’s speakers, county District 2 Supervisor Chris Parlier, extended the celebration to include a compressed-air energy storage project and a steel rebar plant, both of which are being developed not far from the properties where the state grant money will be invested.
“If you haven’t been out to the east side lately, you have to,” he said, adding that aerospace testing and other assets available in the area “are difficult if not impossible to replicate anywhere else.”
Event emcee Justin Salters, project lead at New York-based talent and tech accelerator the Griffiss Institute, traced the county’s success at winning the grants to an economic development effort begun in 2021 and later named B3K Prosperity. He said the collaboration led to the creation of tactics for overcoming fragmentation within the local sector.
The grants through the California Jobs First initiative are intended to fund improvements to the Mojave Air & Space Port, establishment of an innovation hub at CSUB and enhancement of an engineering workshop open to entrepreneurs in the Ridgecrest area.
Salters outlined several efforts he said will come together during the next two years. One will provide leadership within the local industry cluster, including formalization of a “public-private-federal” steering committee and execution of an agreement guiding collaboration.
There will also be a significant expansion of the Mojave Aerospace Accelerator, he said, as well as a broadening of efforts to commercialize military technology.
Additionally, the industry’s growth will benefit from greater use of the Aerospace Valley brand name, development of a business retention and expansion strategy, and construction of a pipeline of companies exploring expansion or relocation within the region, Salters noted.
He said Aerospace Valley, which encompasses much of Antelope Valley, is one of three industry clusters in California, with the other two focused in Southern California and the area around Vandenberg Space Force Base in the Lompoc area. Salters said there is hope that the three can be integrated in a way that benefits all three.
One-quarter of the grant sum will be spent on a project known as Techgrid that CEO Bryan Went of Camarillo-based Future Laboratories said will foster collaboration and innovation among the U.S. Navy, small businesses, industry leaders, academic, government agencies and the U.S. military.
CEO and General Manager David G. Smith at Mojave Air & Space Port, which scored $3.1 million in state grant money, described three construction projects at the facility that are expected to create close to 1,000 construction jobs he predicted will be “repeatable over time.”
The three consist of the repair of a hangar door at the facility, a roof repair job at a building whose next tenant Smith said has already been lined up, and rehabilitation work on a road that offers access to rocket test sites around Mojave.
Already, he said, the air and space port houses 60 “mission partners” supporting 3,000 jobs.
“We can grow that number and absolutely make it better,” Smith added.
Among other speakers at the event was President Vernon B. Harper Jr. of CSUB, which took the lead in applying for the state grant money.
Harper recalled the region’s substantial contributions to the aerospace industry, saying, “We’re not finished making history yet.”
He voiced optimism for the cluster’s future, including for entrepreneurs looking to find ways to innovate in aerospace.
“We believe in the talent, the ingenuity of the people that call this place home,” he said.