Missouri officials made their case Thursday to Boeing Co. executives who are looking for a place to build their new 777X commercial jet.
Gov. Jay Nixon said he had an “extremely productive” meeting in St. Louis with the aerospace giant, to pitch the region as a home for final assembly of the next-generation passenger plane.
Boeing is scouting locations nationwide to build a plant after members of the Machinists union in Seattle rejected pension cuts and other concessions last week tied to building the 777X there.
A Boeing spokesman confirmed the meeting with Nixon but otherwise declined to comment.
While Boeing employs about 15,000 people in the St. Louis area, they work primarily in the company’s defense operations, which are headquartered here. Landing the 777X plant would establish St. Louis as a major player in commercial aerospace, too, probably creating thousands more jobs over the next two decades.
“I am committed to competing for and winning this game-changing project on the aggressive timeline set by the company,” Nixon said in a press release. “Production of the 777X in Missouri would provide a massive shot in the arm to our state’s economy.”
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., also issued a statement lending his support, calling St. Louis an “ideal production site” for the 777X.
“I’m pleased that Boeing is considering St. Louis as a top contender for this initiative,” he said. “I’ll be working hard to make the case to our friends at Boeing that St. Louis is the best place to build this aircraft.”
But competition for the plant is fierce.
Since the Machinists vote last week, Boeing officials have met with governors and top economic development officials in Alabama, California, Kansas, South Carolina and Utah. Texas and Georgia have also expressed interest, and Washington state officials remain optimistic the 777X ultimately will stay in Seattle, where Boeing has long built its commercial airframes.
The company expects to make a decision early next year. Just this weekend at the Dubai Air Show, Boeing inked $95 billion in orders for the plane from Middle Eastern airlines.
Winning the plant will probably require a large incentive package. Washington was prepared to offer Boeing nearly $9 billion in tax breaks over 15 years to build the plant there. Other states also have said they would make rich offers to land the plant.
In his statement, Nixon made no mention of a new incentive program to land Boeing nor did a spokesman have any comment on what sort of subsidies Missouri might offer.
While Boeing has already announced it will place some 777X design work here, St. Louis has generally been seen as a long shot to land the lucrative final assembly plant.
Boeing employs several thousand trained engineers and machinists here, but their experience is mainly on smaller military airframes. And Boeing’s assembly-line workers are members of the same International Association of Machinists that rejected the deal in Seattle, though they work under separate contracts.
Several analysts have suggested Boeing will most likely choose a right-to-work state where it could avoid union contracts.
Still, Nixon was optimistic, and pointed to his administration’s success at reinvigorating Ford and General Motors auto plants as a selling point for Boeing, too.
“This solid record of success, combined with our existing strong relationship with Boeing, makes Missouri a natural fit for production of the 777X line,” he said.
