Lots of cooperation landed airplane plant

BY DAN VOORHIS AND MOLLY MCMILLIN
The Wichita Eagle

Wichita's biggest economic development win in years started with an Oct. 16 phone call and ended five months later in Topeka, where it survived a last-minute political struggle during a headlong rush through the Legislature.

The result: Cessna Aircraft will spend $780 million to start production of its new Columbus business jet, including $200 million for the plant and equipment. The plant will mean 1,010 jobs and a $74 million annual payroll.

The effort to land the Cessna plant included Sedgwick County, the city of Wichita, the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition and Cessna itself. Other groups also helped.

Here's how participants say the deal happened:

Oct. 17, 2007
Cessna executives Ed Pack and Tom Wakefield meet with local officials at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, a day after Pack called to set up the meeting. They lay out the size of the project, the amount of money to be spent and estimated new jobs. They don't say how much they want in incentives.

It falls partly to Al Higdon, interim president of the GWEDC, to develop the package. Higdon, a retired public relations veteran, had volunteered to run the group part-time and is now in the middle of the biggest deal in years.

City, county and state economic development staffs spend the next three months preparing an offer.

Cessna holds similar conversations with economic developers in North Carolina and Georgia, among others.

More here.