WEST POINT – The US Military Academy is a one-off educational facility in the country located right in Orange County and the Orange County Partnership and County Economic Development Office are in talks with officials at West Point to advance high-impact collaborations in next-generation industries and public-private partnerships.
County Partnership President Conor Eckert and County Economic Development Director Steven Gross met Wednesday with officials at the West Point Werx Innovation Hub.
Eckert believes a collaboration would be ideal given what the academy is teaching the future leaders of the country.
“West Point is a one of one asset in the country, so the meeting (on Wednesday) was really with the intent of building a bridge with the intellectual capital at the academy in a way that we can attract private industry, but also support employers that want to scale in advanced manufacturing in a symbiotic way with the academy,” Eckert said.
Gross said it makes perfect sense to work with West Point.
“It’s a brand name that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country. It’s hundreds of years old and we want to capitalize on the fact that we have the nation’s oldest military academy in our county and the fact that that can bring in business and innovation and industry, we need to utilize its top capacity,” he said.
Eckert pointed to symbiotic relationships in biotech, semiconductors, supply chains, and defense tech and he said Orange County and West Point can seed that effort in the Hudson Valley.
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