Orange County Leaders Meet West Point to Lure Advanced Tech Businesses

Orange County's top economic development officials traveled to West Point this week to open talks with the academy's Werx Innovation Hub, targeting a partnership that could draw advanced manufacturing, biotech, semiconductor, and defense technology companies into the county.

Orange County Partnership President Conor Eckert and Economic Development Director Steeven Gross led the two-day meetings, which centered on converting West Point's research capacity and talent pipeline into a competitive recruiting tool for private industry. Eckert called West Point "a one-off asset in the country" and framed the discussions as "building a bridge with the intellectual capital at the academy in a way that we can attract private industry" and support employers looking to scale locally.

Gross echoed that positioning, arguing that the West Point brand and capabilities are unmatched and that partnerships could be built around mutual strengths. The Werx hub, the academy's dedicated innovation center on the Hudson, served as both the venue and the conceptual anchor for the talks.

The industries on the county's target list are capital- and skill-intensive: supply chain technology, semiconductors, biotech, advanced manufacturing, and defense tech. Each carries the potential for high-paying jobs and longer-term economic multipliers that officials are betting a West Point affiliation can help unlock.

If the conversations advance, next steps could include memoranda of understanding, workforce training pilots, and incubator support run through the Werx hub for companies rooted in academy research. For those efforts to succeed, county officials will also need to align zoning, permitting, and infrastructure to accommodate tech-intensive uses, a coordination challenge that spans multiple agencies.

The county's argument to prospective businesses is straightforward: West Point is already here. What Gross and Eckert are now asking is whether Orange County can convert that institutional presence into a reason for private capital to follow.