By Molly Parker
mparker@scbiznews.com
Published Aug. 7, 2009

In 2003, The Boeing Co. selected Everett as the location for its Dreamliner production facility, but not before the company vetted several other sites, many of them in the South.

After the decision was finalized, with Boeing’s new business safely secured, Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon boarded a plane and headed south, to check out the economic development efforts of Southeastern states that were drawing the attention of marquee manufacturing companies.

“I took the time to fly around and see what you all were doing,” Reardon said Wednesday in an interview with the Business Journal. “I wanted to know what this New South was all about.

“What I’ve discovered, what I’ve tried to convey to my peers and elected officials, is the South is indeed very modern and very competitive. In this new economy, the South is a very real strength for America and is a competitor for manufacturing jobs, and is a very real threat for the Northwest and others as well.”

Prior to being elected in November 2003 to lead Washington’s third-largest county, Reardon was a member of Washington’s Legislature. It was in that capacity that he helped coordinate efforts to provide Boeing the lucrative incentive package that persuaded the Chicago-based company to build its 787 assembly line there. Boeing has a long history in Washington and employs 74,000 workers statewide, according to the company’s Web site.

When Boeing announced recently that it was actively looking at sites for a second assembly line to support the Everett facility, Reardon said he was not at all surprised that North Charleston landed on the company’s short list. (Pictured are Global Aeronautica contract workers attending a Dreamliner training session on Friday at Trident Technical College.)

In North Charleston on Monday, Boeing’s vice president and general manager for the 787 program said the company intends to select the second site by year’s end. Scott Fancher said Boeing is looking at expanding in Everett, the county seat of Snohomish County, and in North Charleston, where the company could expand its campus on land owned by the Charleston County Aviation Authority. Fancher wouldn’t say what, if any, other cities were on the list.

Strategy in Washington

Also that day, Reardon and other Washington officials hosted a “Saving Washington Aerospace” conference, during which South Carolina was a regular topic of discussion.

“I’ve long thought South Carolina has been a competitor,” Reardon said. “I started raising the flag on the second 787 line back in January. I have been expressing since then that South Carolina is the No. 1 competitor, partly because of the Vought facility there.”

As part of a $1 billion buyout deal with Vought, Boeing now owns the North Charleston plant where employees work on sections of the jet’s aft fuselage.

“I try to impress upon my peers and elected officials around the state of Washington that those truths are evident, that we all need to work together to make the state as competitive going forward as we have been in the past.”

In the county of about 700,000 people, Reardon said Boeing employs about 35,000. He said that’s a big reason he’s working so aggressively to ensure that Boeing doesn’t flee for South Carolina, or elsewhere.

Part of that means discussing points of weakness for the Washington business climate, though the strategy is also about touting what the state already has in place, such as the ability to stand up a highly skilled aerospace work force.

“It’s evolutionary; it takes time and needs to be nurtured,” Reardon said.

“It takes more than the technical colleges.”

Low profile locally

Meanwhile, S.C. and Charleston-area officials have been operating quietly, behind the scenes, with regard to Boeing. No public summit or forum has been scheduled in response to either Washington’s public effort or Boeing’s announcement that it is actively eyeing the region for expansion.

Angelou Economics penned a much-touted report in April 2005 focused on growing Charleston’s aircraft cluster — it offered several suggestions for growth in the industry and addressing of the state’s areas of weakness — but it hasn’t been updated. The Charleston Regional Development Alliance is in the midst of an aggressive fundraising campaign and plans to use some of that money for a similar regional economic development study, said Karen Kuchenbecker, who oversees marketing and communication strategy for the alliance. That study is expected to start sometime in 2010 and take about 10 months to complete, she said.

Inquiries to the CRDA, Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, S.C. State Ports Authority and New Carolina: South Carolina’s Council on Competiveness as to whether the region should put up its own public fight returned like-minded responses. Either they were unaware of any such efforts, or they declined to comment on any activities related to luring Boeing.

Charleston County Council on Thursday approved a resolution to transfer the fee-in-lieu-of-taxes incentive from Vought to Boeing. The matter is largely procedural and the county has honored such requests on three occasions for American LaFrance, DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler), and KapStone, according to the council agenda packet.

The packet also states that Vought and partner Global Aeronautica have invested $408 million into the North Charleston complexes since announcing their intent to locate there in 2004. The two companies employ a combined 1,500 workers as of August 2009, it states, far more than the 645 employees they had anticipated hiring. The county says it collected fee-in-lieu-of-taxes payments totaling more than $1 million in 2008, “a figure it anticipates to double in future.

Reach Molly Parker at 843-849-3144.