The city of Aurora has announced it will be launching a new center that will offer job training in green energy-related fields through a partnership with two educational organizations.
Aurora’s CEJA Workforce Development Hub, set to be located in a currently unused city facility at 649 S. River St., will bring together the existing workforce development programs of the College of DuPage and the 548 Foundation. Both organizations are funded by the state to run clean energy-related job training programs, but those programs do not yet have a permanent location in Aurora.
“We’re excited to say we found an important alliance in the city of Aurora,” said the College of DuPage’s director of the Aurora CEJA Aurora Workforce Hub, Callie Matheny, at a launch event on Tuesday. “This is city government at work. They have been an extreme, fast-moving partner.”
The programs offered by the two organizations get their funding through the state Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, which also gives the Aurora center its name. The act was signed into law in 2021 and specifically notes Aurora as one of the 13 statewide locations to have such a job-training hub.
Mavis Bates — who is a Kane County Board member, chair of the local chapter of the Sierra Club and on the city’s Sustainable Aurora Advisory Board — called the newly-announced physical location of the Aurora CEJA Workforce Development Hub a “big fancy deal” when she spoke at Tuesday’s launch event.
“I was so excited five years ago when I saw that Aurora’s name was on the list,” she said during her speech. “At that time, I did not realize it was going to be five years before this day would finally happen.”
And although the city did host a “launch” event, Mayor John Laesch in his own speech was quick to point out that the day Mavis spoke about still hasn’t come yet. The leases for the College of DuPage and the 548 Foundation to rent out the building, formerly used by the city’s water and sewer division, have yet to pass the Aurora City Council.
If the Aurora City Council approves the leases at its meeting next Tuesday, they will go into effect on Feb. 1.
In a press release, city officials said the Aurora CEJA Workforce Development Hub will act as a magnet for living-wage job creation and innovative green job training.
Alison Lindburg, Aurora’s director of sustainability, noted in a speech at Tuesday’s launch event that her division is within the city’s economic development department in part because sustainability offers an opportunity for job creation. In Illinois, there’s over 132,000 people working jobs related to clean energy, which is more than the number of lawyers, web developers and real estate agents combined, she said.
Those jobs might include the installation of efficient lighting, connecting heat pumps and other efficient HVAC systems, completing energy audits of homes and commercial buildings, installing electric vehicle charging stations, solar panels and battery storage, and helping to modernize the energy grid, according to Lindburg.
The building set to hold the hub is planned to one day contain both classroom and work space. The classroom is set to be a “living laboratory,” Lindburg said, with its own HVAC system for students to work on and empty spaces in the walls for students to install insulation in.
“We’re lucky to have found a space that can provide for both classroom and workshop in one concise location,” Matheny said. “On a program management level, we’re super excited to have staff, students and all of our stuff in one place. It’s going to be a game changer.”
From the new physical hub in Aurora, the College of DuPage is set to run its seven-week entry-level CEJA Bridge Program, which earns students various certificates related to construction and first aid, Matheny told the Aurora City Council’s Committee of the Whole on Tuesday. After completing that training, students can then choose to go on to more advanced, job-specific training in solar installation, energy auditing and HVAC work, she said.
In total, the college has the capacity to run about six of these programs each year, according to Matheny. More information can be found at: www.cod.edu/academics/continuing-education/career-professional-training/climate-equitable-jobs.html
The planned Aurora hub is also planned to hold a training program from the 548 Foundation, which sets graduates up to become first-year apprentices in the Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council with training in construction and solar systems. Founder AJ Patton said at Tuesday’s launch event that his organization’s program offers $500 weekly stipends to its students to “earn while you learn,” helping to carry them through the training.
The 548 Foundation is open to partnership and doesn’t care about taking the credit, Patton said, so any who have ideas on how to create jobs or have job opportunities are encouraged to reach out. More information about the program can be found at: 548foundation.org
The College of DuPage is on the “workforce development” side of things, which means they are more specific to meeting the needs of local employers, while the 548 Foundation is more on the “climate works” side, which is more in-tune with what the unions would like to see, according to Matheny’s presentation to the Committee of the Whole on Tuesday. She said that both programs rely on Goodwill, which works to educate the community about the programs and guide interested people towards them.
Aurora is also actively looking for additional partners to further expand the CEJA Workforce Development Hub, the city’s press release about the launch event said.
Sustainability and living-wage job creating, particularly through green building, was a large part of Laesch’s campaign platform last year.
As a mayoral candidate, he told The Beacon-News that he would work to attract higher-paying jobs by “positioning Aurora for the green collar economy that’s coming,” at least in part by encouraging businesses that create innovative building materials to move to the city. Later, during his inauguration speech, Laesch spoke about partnering with the local CEJA Workforce Hub to help train students for that coming “green collar economy.”
The training is only the first step, Laesch said at Tuesday’s launch event. The next step will be creating the living wage jobs for Aurora residents, he said, and the city is working hard at finding ways to do that.
One way city officials are hoping to encourage the creation of green energy jobs is through a proposed Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy financing program, commonly called C-PACE. Through the lending program, the owners of commercial properties can borrow at a fixed, low interest rate for renovation or new construction projects related to energy efficiency and similar types of things.
The ordinance allowing the Illinois Finance Authority to manage a C-PACE program from Aurora, alongside the leases for the new CEJA Workforce Development Hub, are set to go before the Aurora City Council at its meeting on Tuesday. Those items are likely to pass since they are all on the meeting’s consent agenda, which is typically reserved for routine or non-controversial items that are all approved with a single vote.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
