Boeing ready to ‘go global’

Associated Press

CHICAGO – The new “world headquarters” signs are in place, the executive jets occupy nearby hangar space and the corporate logo soon will proclaim the Boeing Co.’s presence from the rooftop.

Boeing officially lands in downtown Chicago on Tuesday, leaving behind nearly 80,000 employees in the Seattle area in a corporate upgrade designed to expand its global horizons and declare emphatically that it’s more than a commercial airplane maker.

While the rewards of Boeing’s 1,700-mile corporate flight eastward may be hard to quantify for a while, one thing’s certain. The world’s biggest exporter and aerospace company arrives to open arms in Chicago, where $53 million in state and local incentives are only part of an enthusiastic welcome for the city’s new No. 1 corporation.

Chicagoans greet Boeing officials warmly on the street, the business community is abuzz with Boeing talk, and civic leaders eagerly await the start of the projected $4.5 billion economic impact on the area over 20 years. Illinois Gov. George Ryan and Mayor Richard Daley will pay homage to Boeing at a Wednesday ceremony at its L-shaped headquarters tower on the Chicago River.

The move that jolted Seattle was an “enormous shot in the arm” for Chicago’s efforts to stake out a bigger international role in the era of globalization, said Paul O’Connor of World Business Chicago.

“Globalization is the business and social issue of our time, and Boeing is arguably the singular icon of globalization,” said O’Connor, executive director of the economic development group, which is funded by the city and private businesses.

“We’re lifting off together.”

Boeing settled on its Midwest base over Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver in May. The verdict came down, literally, from the Boeing executive jet carrying chairman and chief executive Phil Condit to Chicago after filing a secret flight plan in Seattle.

While the move announcement may have been showy, its new headquarters is not ostentatious – at least on the outside.

Intent on making a swift move, Boeing leased the top dozen floors of a 36-story office building whose exterior is fairly ordinary by Chicago’s lofty architectural standards. The black-and-beige high-rise, situated just north of the city’s two main train stations and a mile west of Lake Michigan, formerly served as headquarters of Morton International.

Inside, crews of as many as 500 construction workers have been working around the clock since May to convert 275,000 square feet of office space into a high-tech management complex.

Just days before Boeing’s final touchdown, a sneak preview for the media was restricted to a three-minute video and comments in the ground-floor lobby so as not to disrupt crews still standing elbow to elbow in the executive suite. Company officials said workers were putting the final touches on a “very special space” for top staff of the $51 billion corporation.

About 200 employees, including about 175 transfers from Seattle, are expected to start work here Tuesday – a figure that will grow to 400 or 500 by next year.

They will enter a headquarters that has been installed with 225-plus miles of cables to support an elaborate electronic network. Office spaces are equipped with more than 3,000 data and telephone connections, and there will be five high-tech conference rooms, video conferencing facilities on each floor, a television studio, a fitness center and, by year’s end, a public gift shop stocked with Boeing items.

A circular stairway connects the top two floors, which won’t be finished until later in the month. The executive suite is to feature a revolutionary circular boardroom table that will seat 20 of Boeing’s top echelon and have five 50-inch screens with video and Internet capability. Offices will offer Condit and company spectacular views, with Chicago’s architectural splendor and Lake Michigan replacing Mount Rainier.

But this move is as much symbolic as physical – a break with the past that further reduces the company’s historic reliance on its Seattle-based commercial aircraft manufacturing unit.

Besides wishing to separate the headquarters from any one business, said Laurette Koellner, Boeing senior vice president, “We wanted to say with this move that we’re a global company. Chicago is the perfect city for that.”