At the News and Record website, there was a screaming headline: “Greensboro’s culture, vision played role in PTI getting JetZero, CEO says“.
That’s funny. My intuition would have been that the company decided to locate here in spite of Greensboro’s culture and vision.
It is pretty clear that the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority made some key decisions and arrangements that paved the way for JetZero to come. But if you read further in the article, an executive with JetZero admits they were forsaking California in favor of North Carolina:
O’Leary said the co-founders realized early on that doing research and development at its Long Beach, Calif., base made sense, “California is not a very attractive place to do manufacturing at this point.”
They came here because North Carolina is a good state to do business, and California is not.
The article further cites the regional workforce and the incentives granted by state and local government. The state incentives were much more significant than the local incentives, regardless of however we might feel about them.
Our local culture– political or otherwise– had nothing to do with it. The “vision” of the city of Greensboro or Guilford County or their elected officials had almost nothing to do with it.
Let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much. The headline for this story was very misleading. But this is definitely a big win for the airport authority.
Yeah, a big win. But let’s wait and see how it works out.
Skeptics would say the jobs might not materialize as promised. We shall see, Fred.
The General Assembly over the past 14 years, lead by a reform-minded majority in the NC Senate, has placed North Carolina at the top of the list of States for business. Tax reform, regulatory reform, education reform, transportation investment reform, etc.
If Republicans had not taken over the GA in 2011, Greensboro would not have the infrastructure (I 840 and others) that helped create an environment for growth.
Thanks, Jeff. Yes, it was the changes in the business environment at the state level that attracted JetZero– not anything the city of Greensboro did. The company wanted something much better than California and they found it. This is to the Republicans’ credit because the state’s trajectory prior to 2010 would not have produced this outcome.
It is ironic, because the city of Greensboro’s leadership is very much like California’s. If they had control over the entire environment, JetZero would not have come.