“We’re the premier aerospace center in North America, so why shouldn’t Airbus be looking at us?” said Deborah Knutson, the council’s president. “We have the work force. We have all the stuff they need.”
The council is pursuing Airbus business with the blessing of Gov. Christine Gregoire, who announced that the state was submitting bids on behalf of Snohomish, Spokane and Grant counties.
“Washington is the right place for EADS to invest in its North American future,” the governor said.
Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson previously said the city wasn’t interested in the EADS site selection contest. Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon said his administration isn’t chasing EADS either, adding, “I’m a Boeing guy.”
Still, Reardon said, the county is a logical place for EADS to look, and if they come knocking, “my door’s always open.”
While Snohomish County may have many things that an aerospace company would want, it’s lacking something that might be essential in this case – access to the Atlantic Ocean.
“West Coast airport-seaport combinations are out,” Darryl Jenkins, a visiting professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, wrote in this month’s issue of Site Selection magazine.
You may recall that Airbus parent company EADS is pursuing a bid to supply aerial refueling tankers to the U.S. Air Force. The Boeing Co. seemed to have that contract locked up last year, before investigators uncovered a scandal that resulted in jail time for the company’s No. 2 executive and a top Air Force weapons buyer.
But it’s an uphill fight. Neither France nor Germany, the two main players in EADS, are on particularly good terms with the Bush administration. To win the tanker deal, EADS would need an American factory where it could convert A330s built in Toulouse, France, into KC-330s for the Air Force.
To that end, EADS in January announced it would hold a site-selection contest – not unlike the one Boeing conducted in 2003 for the 7E7. Today is the deadline for states to submit bids for up to three locations each. As many as 35 states are expected to do so.
Boeing picked Everett as the site to assemble its new plane, which it has since renamed the 787. But there are significant differences between the EADS effort and the recent Boeing 787 effort.
For starters, there’s the question of whether EADS will ever get a tanker contract. Boeing’s friends in Congress – particularly Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Norm Dicks, both Democrats – have been outspokenly opposed to the notion of having American military personnel fly French jets into war.
In February, Murray issued a statement accusing EADS of “disingenuously wooing U.S. communities as locations for an ‘American’ EADS plant.” The Airbus parent company, she said, is “attempting to secure U.S. taxpayer dollars to support European jobs.”
Still, EADS is making a serious push. It started by hiring the Staubach Co. – owned by Captain America himself, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach – to lead its site selection.
Staubach is one of the top industrial real estate firms in the nation. You don’t call them, Knutson said. They call you.
That’s what makes the Airbus tanker factory site selection so enticing, she said. It’s a chance to get information about Snohomish County’s aerospace industry in the hands of one of the nation’s most important site selection companies.
Even if Snohomish County isn’t a good fit for EADS, it might be just right for some other Staubach client, Knutson said.
“That was a big piece of what we played on,” she said.
According to Jenkins, Snohomish County has little chance of emerging as one of EADS’ top 12 sites.
Sure, we’ve got trained aerospace workers, a big runway, port access and all the other things that convinced Boeing to assemble the 787 here, including that $3.2 billion aerospace industry tax break.
But we’re on the wrong coast. According to Jenkins, EADS will ship A330s components across the Atlantic, so it will certainly pick an East Coast or Gulf Coast site.
Jenkins said the early front-runners appear to be Mobile, Ala.; New Orleans; and Panama City, Fla.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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