4 Bay Area mayors create summit designed to grow local manufacturing

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The disappearance of manufacturing jobs in America was a huge focus of this presidential election.

The mayors of four Bay Area cities joined together to convene the first Bay Area summit designed to grow manufacturing and create jobs.

If you think there's no manufacturing left in the Bay Area, think again. The SF Made website, for example, features hundreds of locally-made, high quality products.

The mayors of San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Fremont think there should be a lot of that. So on Thursday, they gathered at Pier 70 in San Francisco to announce the new Bay Area Urban Manufacturing Initiative.

Their goal is to help companies make more stuff and create lots of well-paying jobs for people without a college degree.

"It's really not about protectionism, it is instead about 'let's see what we have here', and remove all the barriers and drive resources to help grow what is home grown," said Kate Sofis of SF Made.

One company making home-grown products is Circa. The belt maker has been in San Francisco for nearly 50 years and it's not alone.

San Francisco has some 700 manufacturing companies.

A new report says manufacturing in this region has added jobs six years running and there are 108,000 people working in this industry in the Bay Area.