\u00a0Community leaders advocate for maritime, military investment at state summit\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nKelly said Erie could be a strong candidate for that type of investment, pointing to our area’s manufacturing workforce, the Great Lakes region and the former Erie Coke site location as potential advantages for a naval shipyard.<\/p>\n
Support for the proposal is also growing here at home, with local government and business leaders backing the effort, saying the region is well-positioned to benefit from new maritime manufacturing.<\/p>\n
“Anything that Mike Kelly can do to help get us across the finish line to get more workforce here, to get us better aligned with what the Department of Defense is already doing, and really what we already are doing ourselves within Erie County, I am all for,” said Erie County Executive Christina Vogel.<\/p>\n
“Something like a naval dockyard in Erie specifically could be another one of those anchor institutions that increases our population, increases our economic output, it’s just a domino effect that would be huge,” said Jezree Friend, vice president of Manufacturer & Business Association.<\/p>\n
Supporters said the proposal could build on Erie’s industrial strengths while creating opportunities for businesses and workers across the region, with Kelly projecting 1,000 potential jobs created through the project.<\/p>\n
“If you get local government on board with federal government, if you get everybody to just forget about what party they belong to and think about the people they serve, then the answer is you’re gonna win, and you’re gonna improve things for everybody,” said Kelly.<\/p>\n
The legislation is still in its early stages and has to make its way through congress before the act’s vision becomes a reality.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WJET\/WFXP\/YourErie.com.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The vision for a new shipyard on Erie’s bayfront has been introduced to Washington, as U.S. Representatives Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,4769,142,138,137,1881,107286,107288,26644,107289,107287,67753],"class_list":["post-250889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-coke","tag-erie-county","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-manufacturing","tag-maritime-communities","tag-maritime-prosperity-zones","tag-mike-kelly","tag-nathaniel-moran","tag-private-investment","tag-shipbuilding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}