Boeing breaks ground on new Dreamliner plant

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Boeing Groundbreaking

The Boeing Company celebrated the groundbreaking for its new 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in North Charleston on Friday.

The Post and Courier's
Boeing Special Section.

It was a lofty moment in Lowcountry history: Boeing broke ground, setting the stage for South Carolina's economy to take off.

South Carolina's top representatives -- on local, state and federal levels -- hailed the company's decision to build a second 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in North Charleston at a ceremony Friday that marked the official start of construction at the site. Hundreds of workers from the existing Boeing and Global Aeronautica fuselage plants spilled out onto the tarmac at the Charleston airport to watch the fanfare.

Jim Albaugh, Boeing's president of commercial airplanes who arrived fresh from an air show in Dubai, acknowledged the groundbreaking as a turning point for South Carolina's depressed economy, calling it the state's first step toward building "a world-class aerospace capability in South Carolina."

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., summed up the investment's significance in three ways: "jobs, more jobs and many more jobs." Hours before the ceremony began, labor officials announced that the statewide unemployment rate hit 12.1 percent, the highest point it has reached since the recession began.

The factory is expected to employ at least 3,800 workers, which would make it easily the region's largest private employer.

"This airplane may be a game-changer for Boeing, but Boeing is a game-changer for South Carolina," Clyburn said.

A short distance from the excitement, attendees could hear the crackle-and-pop from construction workers who were clearing trees at the company's 210-acre campus. The company's 584,000-square-foot aircraft assembly plant is scheduled to open in 2011 and begin producing three Dreamliner planes a month the following year.

Officials spoke at a podium set up in front of the Dreamlifter, the super-sized plane used to ferry Dreamliner parts across the world. The stage's backdrop displayed a rendering that showed the new assembly building towering over the existing plants.

The additional height, Boeing Charleston Vice President Tim Coyle explained, will ensure that the airplane's tail fin -- jutting 56 feet in the air -- will pass underneath the building's entrance.

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., commended Boeing for the "corporate courage" it took to shift work away from their familiar manufacturing headquarters in Everett, Wash. In doing so, he said, the executives "went against some of the most powerful political interests in our country."

During the ceremony, Albaugh also introduced the assembly plant's newly named general manager, Marco Cavazzoni, who used to oversee the company's technical services division.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey later publicly introduced Cavazzoni to the city's chief building official, Darbis Briggman, promising that the plant's progress won't be held up by the building inspection process. A grateful Cavazzoni, in front of the crowd, jogged over to Briggman and gave him a hug.

But of all the high profile officials to take the podium, the highest praise and a standing ovation went to Sen. Hugh Leatherman, a Florence Republican, who helped craft a $450 million incentive package.

Part of the package involved changing four state laws to give sales tax breaks to corporations that make major investments in the state. State lawmakers reconvened last month to approve that measure in a unanimous vote.

"There's a million reasons to say no to each other in politics and business," U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said. "We found a way to say yes to each other and as a result we're going to get a lot of jobs in South Carolina."

Throughout the ceremony, elected officials thanked the workers -- then defended them.

During negotiations, Boeing executives told state leaders they were worried about finding a pool of qualified workers to staff their highly technical aerospace manufacturing operation. In Washington, they could draw from generations of skilled workers in that industry.

But DeMint said what South Carolina workers "lack in aerospace experience they more than make up for their work ethic and their skills and their caring."

South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell noted that South Carolina's workforce has overcome past stereotypes to make quality products, for example, in the automotive sector -- "Can I interest you in a BMW?"

Albaugh said he visited the plant six weeks ago to check that South Carolina's workers could handle a task of the such magnitude.

"I wanted to make sure for myself that we had a team here that could build a Dreamliner," he said. "And I walked away knowing that they could."