The City of Marquette is one step closer to becoming a SmartZone.

At its meeting Monday, the Marquette City Commission discussed the boundaries of the Local Development Finance Authority.

The boundary includes a portion of the north side of the city where Pioneer Labs is located, but now it will include all of Marquette.

The LDFA in the Houghton/Hancock area is submitting an application to the state to make Marquette a satellite of the SmartZone in the Keweenaw.

“Once that’s approved by the state, and we expect that it will be, then we can move forward with developing our satellite SmartZone,” Marquette Mayor Robert Niemi said.  “There will be a SmartZone Board, we already have the Local Development Finance Authority in place, and we just have to redefine it’s boundaries.”

Niemi called it an exciting opportunity for the city to bring more businesses to the area.

“It will allow us to perhaps attract some businesses,” he said.  “Perhaps there’s some business–budding entrepreneurs at Northern with some intellectual properties that they can bring to market commercially like has been done at Michigan Tech, or perhaps there’s some at Michigan Tech that they might want to bring down to Marquette to bring to market.”