HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Huntsville Madison County delegation which includes Mayor Battle, Commission Chairman Mac McCutcheon, HMC Chamber President Chip Cherry, HSV Airport CEO Butch Roberts, and a few others are in London working to bring more economic development primarily in the aerospace sector to our community.
"This is the place that we define our identity and our identity as an aerospace community," Mayor Tommy Battle shares. "We define our identity as an engineering community. we define our identity as a space community and all of those aspects are shown right here. So, it puts us on an international plane."
Huntsville aerospace community is continuing is ascent and the HMC is at the Farnborough air show in London making the right connections. "All business is made off of contacts and we're making contacts with businesses throughout," Battle shares. "Some of the businesses are already in Huntsville, and they're the ones that we're talking about. Or have you got projects that might be coming up that you might be growing bigger? And would you want to do it in the Huntsville area?
The goal, to bring more economic development primarily in the aerospace sector to the community. "Some of them are companies that need to be in the Huntsville area, who do business in the Huntsville area but have don't have a location and in our city," Battle explains. "So, we take both of them and we try to meld them into something that provides for jobs and economy for the Huntsville area."
Battle shares they also want to make sure the companies that choose to business here are successful. "Their success is our success. So, we want to make sure that they have the infrastructure that they want to make sure that they are a company that needs to be in our area," Battle explains. "We want to make sure that we can promote that company in our area. as we talk through the process of somebody coming or growing their company in our area. every time we do that, we're adding to the economy of Huntsville, Alabama."
Dr. Chuck Karr with the University of Alabama Huntsville shares there's another reason why companies are looking at Huntsville. "They're interested in a couple of things. Number one, their interest in the talent we produce really excited about the quality of the student graduate that we have at UAH," Karr shares. "They have huge workforce needs and they understand that we can help provide for what their needs are on that front. They're also really interested in the research that we do at UAH. So much of what we're going to see over here is space and defense related and that's right now a wheelhouse at UAH so, we're really, really excited to be over here."