Kalamazoo grabbed all the headlines this week with the MPI announcement, but an hour north things are humming, too.

The West Michigan Strategic Alliance offered its "State of the Region" report this week with plenty of good economic news:

But the Strategic Alliance didn't blink in also assessing the region's ongoing challenges, including regional school populations with 40 percent of the students receiving free and reduced lunches due to poverty, rising housing cost burdens, and a widening income disparity between racial groups.

Another new report by The Right Place economic development group in Grand Rapids offers bittersweet news in a new survey of regional employers. More than a third of the businesses responding to the survey said they planned to hire more than 100 workers in the next years. Two-thirds of the businesses said they'd hire more than 100 workers over the next five years. Yet despite the tough economy and relatively high unemployment rate, 40 percent of the responding businesses also described their access to talented workes as "moderately scarce" or "very scarce."