As a way to promote economic development in the Yuma region the Yuma International Airport began planning for a five million dollar Aviation Industrial Center within the airport's Defense Contractor Complex.

"The idea of building this is to attract someone to be a tenant here. There's a lot of exciting things happening within the fence of the Airport Authority and MCAS Yuma which is a joint use facility," said Yuma County Administrator, Robert Pickels.

With aid from a government grant and money straight from the Airport Authority the planning began and with this Yuma is expected to see plenty of open jobs in the near future. "This is going to bring a certain sector of employment to Yuma County, a very high wage sector of jobs because it's high-tech and with high-tech jobs come high wages and so not only are we building on our capacity to put people back to work but we're putting people back to work at high wages, said Pickels.

Many familiar faces spoke at the event including Yuma Mayor Al Krieger who mentioned the highlight of this project is that is was all done locally. He said this is just another way Yuma is taking a step forward in the right direction.