Hispanic Manufacturing Center (Detroit, Michigan)

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In 1995, Gonzalez Design Engineering, The Ideal Group, and Uni Boring, three suburban Detroit, Hispanic-owned manufacturers supplying the automobile industry formed a partnership. The goal: Create an Empowerment Zone in a region where all three firms had deep community roots. An area in southwest Detroit, known locally as Mexicantown, has both a large Hispanic population and an untapped labor pool. That’s exactly where the companies joined to expand their operations to a 22-acre facility.

The Hispanic Manufacturing Center (HMC) became one of the largest and most recognized empowerment zone operators in the nation. The business owners worked with the Mexicantown CDC and the Southwest Detroit Development Corp. Together, they hired contractors to restore the area, helped finance the environmental clean-up of commercial sites for area merchants and organized community policing programs that reduced neighborhood crime.

www.weareideal.com/