13 March 2024
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – The City of Hays is celebrating the grand opening of a new MicroFactory on Wednesday.
The facility is 30,000 square feet near 9th Street and Commerce Parkway, just south of Interstate 70. Construction started back in 2022.
GrowHays said the MicroFactory is designed to meet the needs of startup manufacturers. The goal is to build a manufacturing base in Ellis County.
“The MicroFactory has been constructed to provide a home for those types of businesses so it can start and flourish, and hopefully outgrow the facility and move on to their own building, and we can bring the next one in,” Doug Willams, Grow Hays executive director, said.
It will have various amounts of space allocated for manufacturers as needed.
“Depending on how that slices and dices, we have somewhere between three to five to maybe six different businesses in the MicroFactory,” Williams said.
According to Williams, tenants are being sought to fill the space, and rent for the space is well below market rates.
The MicroFactory was made possible by a State of Kansas Building a Stronger Economy grant, The Patterson Family Foundation, Heart of America Development Corporation, Northwest Kansas Economic Innovation Center and the Schmidt Foundation.