North Carolina landed its biggest economic development project with plans by California aviation startup JetZero to build an assembly factory at Piedmont Triad International Airport that it says may eventually employ 14,564 workers.
The company said it plans to invest $4.7 billion at the Greensboro site, announced during the state’s Economic Investment Committee meeting today. It’s seeking $1.157 billion in state incentives tied to meeting its job and investment targets, along with $784.7 million in local incentives from Greensboro and Guilford County. A large part of the local incentives will be property taxes JetZero won’t pay.
The Golden Leaf Foundation, a public-private group that backs economic development in the state, is providing $60 million in support.
Long Beach, California-based Jet Zero said it considered 17 states before picking North Carolina. Huntsville, Alabama, was reportedly one of the finalists for the project.
The jobs pledged in North Carolina will have an average wage of $89,340, the company said. Guilford County’s current average wage is $60,195. The state’s average wage is $67,474. None of the JetZero jobs will pay less than $18.75 an hour, or $39,000 based on an annual, full-time wage. JetZero will need to invest a minimum of $3.8 billion and employ 10,000 workers to receive the grant money over the next 37 years.
JetZero is expected to start scaling the project by 2027 and have its investment in by Dec. 31, 2036.
Gov. Josh Stein led a delegation of state and local leaders who welcomed JetZero co-founder and CEO Tom O’Leary during an early-afternoon celebratory event at the airport. The view from the parking lot shows the big buildings where Boom Supersonic and Marshall USA are preparing to commence operations, employing more than 2,000 people. Further is JetZero’s future site consisting of several hundred acres on both sides of Interstate 74.
After years of cultivating longtime tenants, including FedEx and Honda Aircraft Co., and preparing shovel-ready development sites, the airport is emerging as the Triad’s economic engine. Dubbed Project Atlas, the JetZero project involved more than a year of negotiations among local and state leaders and company officials.
“Hello North Carolina,” O’Leary yelled to the crowd, applauding as he described the Triad “as the heart of North Carolina’s aerospace corridor’’ and “the epicenter of the next era of flight.” Amid the exuberance, speakers peppered their welcoming remarks with aviation puns.
“For more than 100 years now, a place called Wichita has been known as the air capital of the world,” Greensboro Chamber of Commerce CEO Brent Christensen told the audience. “After today and with a nod to the Wizard of Oz, it’s not in Kansas anymore. Everyone here will be shaping the future of aviation for the next 100 years, and it’s going to be a great ride.”
At full run rate, the JetZero factory plans to produce about 20 airplanes a month and would employ more than 10,000 people, company spokeswoman Jenny Dervin said last month. Employment will grow over the next five years until the facility is running at full speed.
“Early hires will be engineers to get the factory built and operational,” Dervin said. The facility “will employ the latest technology, making it a smart factory with advanced digital tools and industrial AI that will feed and respond to data collected in the build process, making it more cost- and time-efficient.’’
The plane’s all-wing design refers to the blending of the wings and the body, creating a broader appearance that resembles the flat body of the stingray fish. The design allows the entire airplane to produce lift and reduce drag, resulting in up to 50% better fuel efficiency, according to Dervin.
The company aims “to disrupt the $850 billion aviation market by producing a more efficient aircraft designed to perform in a section of the market that is currently without any advanced products,” according to the executive summary of the project by the state’s Economic Investment Committee, part of the Commerce Department. “Over the last 100 years, the aerospace industry has had little innovation to the traditional tube and wing design of the airplane.”
It will carry about 250 passengers with a range of 5,000 nautical miles. It’s aimed at carriers looking to add planes for the “unserved middle market between single-aisle workhorses and larger twin-aisle airplanes,” Dervin said.
JetZero was founded in 2021 by aircraft designer Mark Page and O’Leary, a startup veteran. It is generating interest in aviation circles and reportedly raised about $300 million, though it will need more than $1 billion to launch its program. Earlier this year, United Airlines announced its investment in the company, putting it on a path to order up to 100 airplanes and an option for an additional 100. The agreement is based on JetZero achieving development milestones, including flight of a full-scale demonstrator in 2027.
Later today, a celebratory JetZero reception is slated for Greensboro’s Proximity Hotel. It’s named after a denim mill dating back 130 years, the start of brothers Moses and Ceasar Cone’s textile empire. For decades, now-defunct Cone Mills, Burlington Industries, Guilford Mills and other fabric makers dominated the Gate City’s economy.
The remnants of Greensboro’s textile legacy have given way to the Triad’s emergence as a transportation hub. The convergence of Interstates 40, 85 and 74 in the region has spurred the opening of distribution centers for trucks and improved highway access to PTI.
The airport dates back nearly a century. In 1927, a chartered plane flew the first passenger from then Lindley Field to New York City. Passenger service started in the 1930s. State lawmakers created the Greensboro-High Point Airport Authority in 1941 to own and operate the airport.
Over the decades, PTI has operated in the shadow of the larger Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham airports. Back in the mid-1970s, the cross-country running team of nearby Western Guilford High School crossed a PTI runway during practice.
The 1990s proved evolutionary for the airport with the recruitment of TIMCO Aviation Services’ headquarters, Cessna Aircraft Co.’s service center and hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements, according to PTI’s history. Over the next two decades, the airport added the headquarters of Honda Aircraft and FedEx’s mid-Atlantic hub. They and other tenants have expanded operations.
Nearly 200 aerospace companies operate in the 12-county Triad, anchored by PTI’s more than 50 companies and 8,600 workers. All told, the airport contributes more than $10 billion annually to the state’s economy, according to Kevin Baker, the airport authority’s executive director for 15 years.
“It is Greensboro’s time; it is the Triad’s time,” Greensboro Councilman Zack Matheny said earlier today during a meeting when the council approved economic incentives for as much as $1,000 for each job JetZero creates. Guilford County commissioners approved incentives totaling $75.9 million.
Last month amid speculative news reports, JetZero confirmed it was considering Greensboro as one of three finalists for an assembly factory.
The Gate City’s win makes PTI home to its second early-stage aircraft manufacturer since 2022. That’s when Boom Supersonic chose PTI for its $450 million factory to assemble its faster-than-the-speed-of-sound passenger jet.
After completing the exterior of the 180,000-square-foot facility last summer, Denver-based startup Boom is laying out the production floor and stations for assembling the Overture plane. It has installed a 15-ton crane that will be used to move fuselage and wing sections during Overture production.
Boom says it will produce 33 aircraft a year, requiring about 1,700 workers to assemble the first aircraft scheduled to roll out in 2029. Economists for the state project a $32.3 billion impact over 20 years.
Nearby at PTI, U.K.-based Marshall Aerospace has put up its facility for servicing U.S.-based fleets of Hercules C-130 tactical transport aircraft. After breaking ground in 2023, the company is investing $50 million in its U.S. operations and creating 240 jobs.
Across Interstate 73 from Boom and Marshall is about 800 acres of land, including a former golf course, owned by PTI and graded for aviation development. An aircraft taxiway across the interstate connects the main airport campus to the tract.
While details aren’t final, JetZero will occupy property on both sides of the interstate, Baker said in an interview earlier today.
