Boom Supersonic is Culmination of PTI's Desire to be a Haven for Aviation

Jan. 26—GREENSBORO — Boom Technology, a 7-year-old aviation company based in Englewood, Colorado, will receive up to $12 million in tax incentives from Guilford County and $1,500 per job from Greensboro to build its Boom Supersonic airliner factory at Piedmont Triad International Airport.

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners held a rare early morning meeting Wednesday to unanimously approve the incentives, which require the company to invest up to $500 million and employ up to 1,700 workers at the site.

Ninety minutes later the Greensboro City Council voted unanimously to approve an incentive of $1,500 per job that the company creates.

Also Wednesday morning, the state's Economic Investment Committee unanimously approved a Job Development Investment Grant package worth up to $106.5 million to pay for infrastructure improvements at PTI. The committee is required to give final approval to the largest N.C. Commerce Department incentive packages.

The committee said Boom also considered sites in Greenville, South Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida, for the project. Construction is projected to begin sometime this year.

Gov. Roy Cooper will formally announce the new company at a press event at 2 p.m. at the airport on Wednesday. Regional officials have been working for many months to recruit the company.

The manufacturer, which has contracts with major airlines to buy its yet-untested supersonic airplane, is the culmination of dreams of at least two former Airport Authority board chairmen, Executive Director Kevin Baker, and the Triad economic development community for more than a decade.

It comes a little over a month after Toyota announced it would build a $1.3 billion factory in Randolph County for batteries to power electric cars. That announcement was also the climax of a decade-long effort to recruit a major manufacturer to the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite near Liberty.

Putting Greensboro and the Triad on the international map for its manufacturing has been a dream of business leaders for more than 25 years after the textile, tobacco and furniture industries — once the bedrock of the region's employment — cut tens of thousands of jobs, moving some overseas while other companies shrank due to dropping sales.

Five years ago, PTI was already seeing thousands of workers join the HAECO aircraft maintenance company and Honda Aircraft Co., which manufactured the jewel of the very light jet market, the HondaJet.

But officials were pressing on with plans for the western side of the airport, on the opposite side from the prosperity on the east.

Five years ago, they were still building a massive taxiway bridge over the yet-uncompleted Interstate 73 so aircraft could be transported from an aviation megasite of 1,000 acres onto the airport's 2-mile western runway.

Now that work is done and the dream of recruiting a major aircraft manufacturer is about to come true.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 336-373-7371 and follow @BarronBizNR on Twitter.

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