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Jun. 17--It's not the $200 million project announced two years ago, but NetJets is still expanding at Port Columbus.
The revised plan to be unveiled today calls for a more modest $21 million project that will create a 140,000-square-foot headquarters for the fractional jet-ownership company at Port Columbus by May 2012.
The new building will allow the world's largest private-jet operator to consolidate its 1,300 employees in Columbus in one place and give it room to grow after having cut hundreds of jobs in the past year.
The project also gives the company access to 10 more acres for additional growth.
Downsizing the project "was the right thing to do," said David Sokol, who became NetJets' chairman and CEO last year. "It saves money, and it's more efficient," he said.
Sokol said the revised plan is prudent and realistic, compared with the very large campus proposed by the company in 2008 under the previous CEO, Richard Santulli.
Sokol was brought in to lead NetJets at a time when the Berkshire Hathaway-owned company was in financial trouble; it lost $711 million in 2009.
Sokol said the decision to build a new headquarters at Port Columbus, where it already had its operations base, was the best choice. Options were to renovate other buildings or keep the local work force split between the airport and leased offices in the Easton Town Center area.
But while endorsing construction of a new headquarters, Sokol scaled the project back. The new project also will not include FlightSafety, a pilot-training company also owned by Berkshire Hathaway. NetJets had said in 2008 that FlightSafety would co-locate its Port Columbus operations at the new NetJets campus. FlightSafety continues to maintain separate operations at the airport.
"The numbers make it clear they were building a Taj Mahal, not just a functional office building," Sokol said.
The new building will be attached by a walkway to NetJets' existing building on Bridgeway Avenue, on the north airfield of Port Columbus. The company will move its Easton workers there and give up that outlying office space when the lease expires in June 2012.
The Daimler Group, based on the Northwest Side, will develop and own the building. NetJets intends initially to sign a 20-year lease for its use. Columbus' Moody Nolan architects is working on the project with Daimler. The building is expected to be LEED-certified for energy efficiency.
Sokol said the arrangement will save NetJets $900,000 per year over the cost of leasing its 130,000 square feet of office space near Easton.
The new building will benefit from a 10-year, 75 percent enterprise-zone tax abatement from the city of Columbus; that was part of the more than $90 million in incentives offered to NetJets in 2008 to stay in Columbus.
At the time, NetJets was planning a major expansion, expecting to hire 800 people over six years. Instead, the economy faltered, and the company ended up laying off about 5 percent of its work force.
Because the company's plans changed, Sokol said it won't seek to use other incentives offered two years ago. The airport authority, which owns the land, has given NetJets a credit toward the project's design phase in exchange for not having to move the airport radar station at a cost of more than $10 million, as was originally expected.
Elaine Roberts, CEO of the airport authority, said retaining NetJets and seeing it expand at the airport are positives for central Ohio. "It's great for the community to have locked down that they'll stay in Columbus, and that they've relocated their corporate headquarters here," Roberts said.
She added that the airport still hopes some companies that do business with NetJets will put down roots at the airport. NetJets' presence also benefits Columbus' drive to get more commercial air service because it's a big user of traditional airlines, moving its workers to and from Port Columbus.
Some new Columbus employees will arrive at NetJets before work on the new headquarters begins. About 40 workers will move from the Hilton Head, S.C., area as part of the consolidation of the company's NJI large-cabin jet unit.
About 70 workers at operations there were offered the chance to move to the Columbus operation.
Sokol called the number who accepted the offer a better-than-expected response.
