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November 30, 2011 in News, Business
Boeing will keep 737 MAX production in Renton
Spokane groups see big opportunities for related production, supply work in this area
In this Aug. 30, 2011 photo, a model of the newly revealed 737-MAX passenger airplane, which feature redesigned CFM International LEAP-1B engines, is photographed in Renton, Wash.
(Full-size photo)
Ending months of speculation, Boeing on Wednesday announced it will base future production of the already in-demand new 737 MAX aircraft in Renton.
State and area officials have worked for months on helping convince the company to keep future production of the new airplane in Renton, where Boeing makes the current generation of the aging but still popular 737 passenger jet.
So far Boeing has lined up roughly 700 commitments for the more fuel-efficient 737 MAX from several airlines.
Boeing has reviewed potential sites for 737 MAX production since the company announced in August that it will build a new-engine variant of the market-leading 737.
Spokane officials say they are delighted with Wednesday’s announcement and intend to get a piece of the action, including possibly landing a second production line for the new jet, expected to go into service in 2017.
Boeing announced on Wednesday a deal between the company and the Machinists Union was struck to ensure the aircraft is built in Renton.
Renton was considered the top contender for the manufacturing work, which also was being sought by several other cities and states. Spokane never presented itself as a candidate for the main facility, but officials here said the area has advantages that could streamline 737 MAX production.
Citing the area’s available land, workforce skills and infrastructure as assets to help Boeing meet its 737 demand, several Spokane groups, including the Community Colleges of Spokane, the City of Spokane, Spokane County, Greater Spokane Inc. and Spokane International Airport, plan to submit a proposal to Boeing next year, said Larry Krauter, the airport executive director.
He met with area leaders to discuss a statewide aerospace competitiveness study at a meeting Wednesday at the GSI offices in downtown Spokane.
That proposal has two targets, he said: to recruit Boeing to add a secondary production site in Spokane if it needs more capacity than Renton provides; and to recruit one or more suppliers of equipment and components for the 737 MAX.
If nothing else, Boeing might consider using a Spokane site as a secondary drop-off site for component assembly before the aircraft are hauled to Renton for final assembly, said Krauter.
The Machinists agreement, which must be ratified by the union, includes a contract extension for machinists, according to Boeing. An Associated Press story reports that the Machinists likely agreed to call off a labor contract dispute with Boeing in exchange for the company’s commitment to future production in Washington state.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire is asking the state legislature for more money for education, workforce and transportation projects in order to keep the state at the forefront of aerospace skills and production.
The aerospace industry provides at least 89,000 direct jobs in Washington, with many production salaries ranging from $81,000 to $91,000 per year.
Greater Spokane Inc. President Rich Hadley said it made obvious sense for the Spokane coalition to emphasize the advantages this area provides. He met with other city and area leaders Wednesday to underline Spokane’s plans to use aerospace as a key way to land new jobs.
Even if all production remains on the West side, Hadley said those Spokane firms doing work tied to supplies and parts for Boeing will benefit from the announcement. “That’s good news for those companies,” Hadley said.
A recent study prepared by Accenture looking at the state’s aviation industry noted that Renton and Spokane were the two state locations best positioned to help Boeing and other aerospace companies expand. Other areas in the state were also noted in the Accenture study, which was funded by Washington Aerospace Partnership, a statewide advocacy group.
Krauter said Spokane’s airport has extensive land and untapped transportation resources for expanded aerospace production. He said two current land sites, on the west and south ends of the airport, have been designated as key locations for possible company expansion.
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liberal_in_right_wing_land on November 30 at 11:34 a.m.
While sad we wont be able to get the jobs here in Spokane, I am very happy that we will not be losing the current union jobs in Renton who build the best airplanes in the world.
westerly on November 30 at 11:44 a.m.
Spokane..too far away from Puget sound manufacturing centers. Transportation costs and on and on. And..the lack of engineering schools in Spokane and hi tech education.
The_Seer on November 30 at 11:45 a.m.
Zoning, schmoning… Boeing didn’t move the plant to Spokane County because we don’t have a highly educated workforce in Spokane County. Duh. The SeaTac region is filled with engineers and highly skilled aviation machinists Boeing requires for the manufacture of their products.
CougarGold on November 30 at 11:46 a.m.
The Boeing plant itself was a long shot. However, many key suppliers will be locating in general proximity within the state, including potentially in Spokane so there is still much left to be done competitively. We certainly don’t want to give up the effort to be a support/vendor site for upstreaming buy-outs to Boeing for this project.
zelda on November 30 at 12:06 p.m.
Spokane’s bid for the Boeing 737 MAX was subterfuge to obtain zoning changes on the West Plains and for other light industrial areas in the county. The commissioners said these zoning changes were temporary pending Boeing’s decision. But are they?
Whatever Spokane County and the city were up to in orchestrating this charade, the objective certainly wasn’t luring Boeing with an 11th-hour PowerPoint presentation. It all seems like a smokescreen for something else.
CougarGold on November 30 at 12:10 p.m.
zelda - You really need to get more information. Not everything is a conspiracy concocted by a few local, shady officials. Google Project Pegasus and do some reading. This was an effort initiated by Governor Gregoire and led by a Seattle attorney appointed by her, in cooperation with local governments and GSI. Happy reading!
Jethro_toll on November 30 at 12:28 p.m.
CougarGold.. J. Tayloe Washburn of Foster and Pepper is clueless.
Boeing wouldn’t build a porta potty in Spokane after they shafted Spirit Aviation.
Hadley and the other jesters of the AIR (Head) Spokane group are fumbling a ball that was never passed. They were just this morning touting a Port District which would increase YOUR taxes to pay for it and to feather the pockets of more bureacrats.
The local yokels should have gotten in bed with the IAM/AW Union a long time ago. There is NO way that the Union would have farmed out work from the Renton plant. Especially when it meant JOBS JOBS and max overtime pay for the Rentonions. The Union would have never tolerated Spokane Wages for its workers over here anyway.
This baby was stillborn way before conception and inception. Besides Boeing already has and uses its huge facilities in Moses Lake.
zelda on November 30 at 12:47 p.m.
It’s not so much that this was a long-shot bid, but that we in Spokane didn’t see or hear news coverage about it until a few weeks ago. And then, seemingly out of the blue, we hear that Spokane is making a bid for the Boeing 737 MAX. Spokane’s interest in this wasn’t even picked up in any of the aviation trade publications until a few days ago. However, Spokane’s zoning changes for the West Plains to allow taller buildings coincided with the Growth Management Act’s scheduled review with the deadline for comments being Nov. 21.
I am not a conspiracist — just saying that Spokane officials and power brokers are incapable of saying anything that can be accepted at face value. I’m not imagining there’s a Evil Plan, but where the West Plains is concerned, there’s a lot of behinds-the-scenes maneuvering and land speculation going on.
Not only was Spokane a long-shot in this race, it was scratched at the gate.
oneanddone on November 30 at 12:49 p.m.
This is just another classic example of business using the threat of relocating to extort concessions from workers, locals, and govt. Boeing never had a thought to move, they just wanted to squeeze more from the local area. It’s what business does, and at the same time tries to bank all their profits while sticking the taxpayer with all their losses. It’s the American way and Congress is on board.
The_Seer on November 30 at 1:17 p.m.
zelda is correct about the zoning changes. She is just confused as to why they were changed for the West Plains at the last minute under the ruse of luring Boeing to Spokane. I know why they were changed: To build a multi-story new jail.
Think about it.
de3 on November 30 at 1:47 p.m.
Since the reason given for the county-wide zoning change was for a Boeing plant - does no Boeing plant mean they will undo the zoning changes?
westerly on November 30 at 1:59 p.m.
Funny, Sea Times, PI, Tacoma Trib, etc, say absolutely zero about Spokane trying to get Boeing over here and they were running in second place…blurred reality for Spokane leaders…must of been a quick email to Boeing to beg them to come here. Renton has the facilities, and expansion to deal with the Max , plus thousands of engineers and tech workers…….Spokane doesn’t.
zelda on November 30 at 2:21 p.m.
@The_Seer — Oh, ya’ got me. I didn’t think about the jail. I have temporary blindness from all the smokescreens. Thanks for clearing the air.
The West Plains is a perverse study in the cycle of poverty. A person can be discharged from the air force which he joined because he had zero job prospects out of high school, get a job paving things at the airport, enroll in some concocted major at a for-profit college taking on student loan debt that can’t be discharged through bankruptcy, find out his degree is worthless, go broke spending his meager wages gambling at the casino, have his 25% APR car repossessed, become depressed because of his debts, acquire a drug habit to self-medicate his misery which necessitates theft, get arrested and incarcerated at a West Plains prison, be released and get a back-breaking minimum wage job if he’s lucky, then the cycle begins all over again.
Meanwhile, we have a rock-solid, law-and-order, conservative political base that really likes to jail people for non-violent crimes which is an attitude that the for-profit private prison system operators dearly love. There isn’t a single aspect of being poor and desperate that can’t be exploited for financial gain. But I digress…
New jail, new casino — all hail the bringers of jobs.
RedCedar on November 30 at 2:24 p.m.
These days most of the “Boeing” employees work for job shops rather than the main company. Spokane can still get a lot of that business, and those same shops can make parts for Airbus as well. Politicians love to get the big factory to move to their city, but most jobs these days are with small companies. The key is to create a sufficient “industrial ecosystem” to support the parts plants and subassemblers.
PhilMcC on November 30 at 2:42 p.m.
Is it my imagination, or did this article completely change since I read it a few hours ago?
mdriftmeyer on November 30 at 3:22 p.m.
Rebuild the heavy/high speed freight distribution lines and Spokane will be a manufacturing hub. The amount of cheap land available at Spokane International makes it extremely attractive, once several rail lines return.
hunternomore on November 30 at 3:30 p.m.
Zelda—you hit the nail on the head! Magnificent. Spokane needs more “insight” like yours and others with your courage to speak out about it!!!
zelda on November 30 at 3:40 p.m.
@PhilMcC — No, it’s not your imagination. Today’s developments have been placed in a Waring blender and the S-R hit the frappe button. Their blender is set on 11 — one notch higher than spin. It also takes you into another dimension of space-time called “This all turned out exactly as we intended.”
Read the Seattle Times article to return your brain to its original factory settings.
de3 on November 30 at 3:57 p.m.
Spokane never bid for the plant and was only seeking to set up opportunities for suppliers?
Here’s what they said 3 weeks ago -
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/nov/06/editorial-areas-pitch-for-boeing-plant-will-take/
They sure confused all of us!
If they are not building jets in Spokane - and never planned to - then why the 150 foot height limit for big jets? Now they say Spokane is just building little parts? This does not add up.
Some one’s telling big lies and the SR needs to call them on it..
zelda on November 30 at 4:37 p.m.
The only thing GSI is good at is experimenting with mass hypnosis. Gosh, you got people all excited and it was just an illusion. GSI’s next trick is conjuring up a Boeing supply chain now that height restrictions have been lifted and we’re mesmerized by the shiny object called a port district swinging back and forth in front of our glazed-over eyes.
They don’t call Spokane the scam capital of America for nothing.
Maybe GSI members find these parlor tricks entertaining but I don’t. Tell the truth once in a while. They’ve tried everything else.
toms on November 30 at 5:39 p.m.
Yes. There was a “recasting” of the story around noon.
The initial story came from some time-warp. Once the person who attended the GSI meeting came in, the new and improved version arrived.
Glad you’re all amused and sorta focused. The CFL (commenter fog level) got to around 11 but now is back to a standard 8.8 or so. In this case, that could be explained by the “switch” plus the usual conspiracy theories.
For the record, the link mentioned by De3 is not a news story. It was an editorial.
The only (only prior) SR news story that referenced the county zoning and the 737 plan clearly said (http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/nov/23/county-to-decide-on-property-tax-hike/) that the region was in the hunt for “a production plant.”
That is exactly the same statement as today’s story provides.
zelda on November 30 at 6:48 p.m.
>>For the record, the link mentioned by De3 is not a news story. It was an editorial. <<
That’s a distinction without a difference. Civic leaders I presume came and talked to the editorial board and the editorial was written with information provided at that meeting. The 737 MAX production facility was clearly implied and readers did not make a quantum leap to conclude that that was the desired outcome.
Readers were led to believe — by GSI, the S-R editorial, S-R articles, and local news in aggregate — that Spokane was a strong contender for the assembly plant, not for a possible increase in business at a low-level supplier of nuts and bolts.
GGI’s hype did not match the outcome and readers’ should not be blamed for looking askance at this disingenuous mirage.
To say that people misunderstood is not defensible.
de3 on November 30 at 6:52 p.m.
“Boeing manufacturing plant” appears in the first sentence of the linked SR new story. A bit down the page and it says Boeing needs a 100 foot high building to hold a 737, not parts assembly.
No wonder we are confused.
de3 on November 30 at 8:40 p.m.
KHQ “Boeing Rejects Spokane Bid for New Plant”
http://www.khq.com/story/16156315/boeing-rejects-spokane-bid-for-new-plant
How did Boeing reject the bid that was never made? This is all so confusing.
toms on November 30 at 10:05 p.m.
The distinction between editorial and news story is basic.
Not surprised people don’t get that here. Any further effort to explain that is a waste of energy.
Peace out.
zelda on November 30 at 10:31 p.m.
I should have been more specific. There is little distinction between a news story and an editorial at the S-R, the San Diego Union-Trib. and a few other newspapers.
From where did the person or people who wrote the S-R editorial get the info. to write knowledgably about the matter? Whomever the source was, the source was either misinformed or…something.
The county didn’t need to change zoning height restrictions allowing for a big 737 tail fin if certain people knew all along that the only business coming our way from Boeing making peace with the Machinists would be am uptick in future orders for a few local parts suppliers, esp. if the zoning change is supposedly temporary. I can understand trying to capitalize on the spill-over effect from Boeing, but civic leaders could at least be up-front about it. It will take months to years for production to ramp-up sufficiently in Everett that Boeing will need to do more sourcing from Spokane.
If they were actually being honest in their intent, then it’s become abundantly clear now that this was all about Boeing and the Machinists extorting each other and Boeing agreed on Renton in hopes of keeping the NLRB off its back because of what happened in S.C. Surely somebody at GSI knew that this was all about labor/management tussles. Did they think they could make Spokane a right-to-work county exclusive of state law?
wenric on December 01 at 7:24 a.m.
You guys are absolutely amazing!
So what if folks are trying to make lemonaide out of lemons by saying we can now focus on suppliers. All of the original information indicated we were indeed in the hunt for manufacturing aircraft.
Do you actually think business leaders, the airport, numerous elected officials and the newspaper would conspire to change the building height throughout all of the unincorporated county (don’t forget the city’s building height for light industrial is already 150’ and will include all the area around the airport when they annex it on January 1st) to build one jail and a casino???! Anyone stop to think the tribes are sovereign nations and do not abide by any jurisdiction’s zoning code? Anyone study the jail plan to realize it is proposed as a horizontal facility (no more than 2 stories) to help reduce costs?
Wow!
CougarGold on December 01 at 12:15 p.m.
Okay, first, GSI opposes the construction of the casino as it lies in MIA 4 of the Joint Land Use Study area. Don’t know what that is? Look it up.
Second, GSI supported a horizontal configuration for the jail, not vertical, as the horizontal configuration saves significant cost and is more flexible for any necessary expansion. Don’t believe it? Look it up.
Both those ‘theories’ expressed above are incredibly disingenuous. Do some research, then speak with knowledge.
As for Boeing and potential suppliers, look at the aircraft painting company that built here recently. What if they or other ‘after-market’ or airline maintenance operations were to look to Spokane as a potential site with proximity to Boeing? Don’t you think they may need some rather tall facilities?
zelda on December 01 at 1:01 p.m.
How about flying them to Moses Lake to be painted? Lots of tall buildings at the industrial facility that used to be Larson AFB. Besides, Boeing already knows what’s available in Moses Lake. And they can save on fuel costs by keeping the final stages of production as close to Puget Sound as possible. Heck, why leave Western Washington at all?
CougarGold on December 01 at 3:17 p.m.
Boeing doesn’t do the painting for the airlines, it’s after-market.
There isn’t enough room in Seattle/Renton/Everett nor available workforce to serve all their needs. And why would we want this work going to Moses Lake rather than here? Let’s bring some jobs to Spokane!