By Oona Goodin-Smith
Flint, MI - A 435-job, $29 million automotive seating assembly plant (click here) will be built on Flint's long-vacant Buick City complex.
At a board meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 22, the Michigan Strategic Fund approved a $4.35 million state grant to the Lear Corporation - a Southfield-based auto supplier - to build a 150,000-square-foot building at 902 E. Hamilton Ave., the location of the former administration building at Buick City.
Lear chose to develop the historic Flint site over moving production to Mexico, according to a state memo.
Flint has offered a 50 percent tax abatement to the company to reduce the overall cost of doing the project in Michigan, the memo said.
Flint City Council approved Lear's development agreement in June, in which Lear pledged to "use efforts to hire locally whenever reasonably possible" for two years, according to documents obtained by MLive-The Flint Journal in a Freedom of Information Act Request....
