Australia, Canada cheer the 7E7, too

Everett wasn’t the only place celebrating the Boeing Co.’s decision to offer the 7E7 to customers.

From Winnipeg to Melbourne, the decision was hailed as a job-creating jolt to local economies by representatives of governments and Boeing business units that will build components for the Dreamliner.

Boeing’s Australian subsidiary, Hawker de Havilland, will get work worth about $750 million in U.S. dollars over the next 13 years, newspapers in Melbourne reported earlier this month.

Contracts to build wing components — the trailing edge control surfaces, to be precise — will create as many as 850 jobs at Hawker’s plants in Melbourne and Sydney, and at their Australian suppliers.

That’s big, considering that Hawker only has 1,300 employees, according to The Courier-Mail of Brisbane.

A Boeing spokesman in Australia called the contract one of the most significant in the nation’s aviation history. It’s one that it "clearly cements Australia as a tier-one aerostructure supplier," said Hawker’s business development general manager Tony Carolan.

North of the border, the impact wasn’t as great, but officials still were calling it a "must-win" for Boeing’s Winnipeg division.

The province of Manitoba has allocated $408 million in U.S. dollars for a seven-year job training program to prepare workers to do parts work for the 7E7.

The program would train 20 or more engineers, support staff and production workers, according to the Winnipeg Sun.

Boeing Canada is expected to produce the fairings that connect the wing to the body of the jet, starting in 2006.

In Oklahoma, any sour grapes the city of Tulsa may have felt about being passed over as a final assembly site may have been sweetened by the fact that Boeing’s Tulsa division has plans to add 500 workers to build wing components for the jet.

"Oklahoma was still a big winner in the Boeing selection process," Gov. Brad Henry told the Associated Press.

Tulsa County approved a $350 million incentive package — paid for through a voter-approved sales tax increase — that would have gone to Boeing if it had landed the Dreamliner there. Since it didn’t, the tax increase was automatically repealed.

The state of Oklahoma also had prepared incentives, which it was not releasing, the Associated Press reported.

Down in Louisiana, details of what that state had offered Boeing were released. In short — not much.

Basically, the state tried to sell Boeing on the benefits of building a new factory in one of three Louisiana cities, without offering special tax breaks or other financial incentives, The Advocate of Baton Rouge reported.

The proposal suggested that Boeing consider Alexandria, Lake Charles and Shreveport, the paper said. It highlighted the state’s usual package of development incentives for new companies, such as ensuring that taxes are generally equal to that of any other state seeking the plant, as well as incentives for training, infrastructure and tax abatement.

But Louisiana’s proposal did not offer direct financial incentives specifically tailored for Boeing.

Elsewhere, leaders of cities that had been overlooked put a brave face on things.

In Millville, N.J., local economic development director Donald Ayres gave a typical response.

"The very fact that it was in the competition has put Millville on the map — to cite a cliche," Ayres told The Press of Atlantic City.

Information gathered for Boeing has been useful in attracting other companies, he said. "We are honestly working with several prospects that we feel would not have known about Millville Airport without the effort by the city, county and state team to attract Boeing to Millville."

In Eastern Washington, the reaction was similar.

"For Moses Lake, life goes on," Terry Brewer, the executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Council, told the Columbia Basin Herald.

"The publicity … it certainly does us no harm," he said. "We can imagine that one day, some good will come from it."

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.