A crowd of Lake County small business owners and area manufacturers were given something of a reintroduction to the College of Lake County Advanced Technology Center Thursday evening, with nearly a dozen chambers of commerce working to build a pipeline between businesses and a pool of local talent.
With Lake County sitting as the second-largest manufacturing county in the state, the 170,000-square-foot facility has serious potential for employers in the region, but only if they know about it.
Claire Slattery, executive director of the Lake Zurich Area Chamber of Commerce, was one of 11 area chambers of commerce that took part in Thursday’s event. Similar previous networking events hadn’t drawn nearly as many businesses, and she was pleased with the turnout.
“When chambers work together, we can spread the word,” Slattery said.
The manufacturing sector is the largest employer in Lake County. The ATC will feed into that sector, she said.
“It’s hard to be hiring,” Slattery said. “Why waste time trying to find someone when they’re right here?”
Ali O’Brien, the College of Lake County’s vice president for community and workforce partnerships, hoped attendees would see the college as a resource for their businesses, creating a talent pipeline “desperately needed” by area manufacturers.
She said the ATC will also help shift perceptions around what modern manufacturing looks like. Attendees were given tours of the facility’s training areas, where machinery sat in neat rows under bright lights.
“It’s high-tech, it’s clean, it’s vibrant and it leads to amazing career pathways,” O’Brien said. “We hope this building and the programs it houses really do a great job shifting perceptions.”
The networking event was important for the school’s overall goal, O’Brien said, to create connections between area businesses and the school. With so many participating chambers, the college was taking advantage of the “opportunity to leverage their power to bring their members into our facility,” O’Brien said.
One of those members was Lauren Nagys, director of marketing for Smalley, a Lake Zurich manufacturer. This was her first time touring the facility, and she was surprised by the scale and size.
“It’s exciting to see this investment in manufacturing and the future of trades in the community,” she said. “I’m just looking to see how we can partner, and what we can learn from the students coming out of this center, and maybe eventually have them be talent at our own facility.”
Nagys appreciated the school’s focus on trades that can support businesses.
“I think it’s a great move to be able to have this future pipeline here,” she said. “We’ve been in our facility since 2022, so we plan on staying in Lake Zurich for a long time, and having this center close by is going to be a good thing.”
