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HOUGHTON - After Robert Sawyer's tour of the Houghton/Hancock region Friday morning, the Economic Development Agency's Chicago regional director had a promise: There's more checks on the way.

"I like to bet on a winner, and you're already winning here," he said at the former Upper Peninsula Power Co. building in Houghton.

Taylor was one of many on hand to celebrate the latest of those victories - a $3.02 milion EDA grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to renovate the UPPCO building for Michigan Tech Economic Corp. SmartZone use, as well as a $500,000 grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. for a 20-year lease of the building's first floor. Tech purchased the building in July.

The incubator is the fourth for the SmartZone, which also has businesses in the Powerhouse and Advanced Technology Development Complex in Houghton and Finlandia University's Portage Campus in Hancock.

MTEC SmartZone CEO Carlton Crothers cited the Oscar Wilde quote, "Success is a science. If you have the conditions, you get the result."

"In many ways, we are a working science for success," he said.

Speakers at the presentation included Sawyer, Crothers, Tech President Glenn Mroz, Houghton Mayor Eric Peterson, U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, State Rep. Mike Lahti, MEDC U.P. representative Cathi Cole, and Amy Berglund, representative for U.S. Sen. Carl Levin.

Multiple speakers called Houghton-Hancock a model for Michigan's future.

"This is where people are going to want to live, in places like Houghton and Hancock," Mroz said. "We've got the quality of life, and distance doesn't matter anymore."

The building's renovations include work to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, as well as movable walls to facilitate expansion. The project is expected to be complete by the summer of 2009.

The new facility is expected to create 50 new jobs in the building, and result in an additional $5 million in private investment in the area.

"I'd like to commend the city and county for taking the next step in a positive direction," Cole said.

Stupak said he was proud of the SmartZone's accomplishments.

"These are good high-tech jobs, high-paying jobs, and they add so much to our community," he said.

Sawyer contrasted the Houghton-Hancock area with Wilmington, Ohio. The similar-sized town had bet it all on one large company - then floundered as it shuttered its U.S. operations, taking away 10,000 jobs from the 12,000-person town.

"You're not facing that, and the reason you're not facing that is you're diversifying," he said.

Mroz welcomed Sawyer's enthusiasm about future grants.

"I'm glad to know that this is just a comma in life, that we're going to continue on this road as we fill up this business incubator and add more companies and go on after that," he said.

Garrett Neese can be reached at gneese@mininggazette.com.