Kansas City Courting C Series

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Bombardier isnt just sniffing the ground for customers for its proposed C Series aircraft, its also looking for a place to build them. Folks in Kansas City consider themselves to be front-runners for the $375 million plant that would turn out the 110- and 130-seat airliners, which are the first clean-sheet aircraft from the Montreal-based planemaker in decades. The factory would employ 2,100 people and the proposed investment dwarfs the last big deal attracted to KC, an $86 million Harley Davidson factory built 10 years ago. Local and state governments are rolling out the incentives for Bombardier.

Missouri is ready to pass a mega-project amendment to its current economic deal-sweetener legislation and it could amount to incentives worth $880 million over the next 22 years. But the economic imprint of all those $55,000-a-year aerospace jobs at the factory itself and the spinoff industries that will pop up is estimated at $5.9 billion. “They really like Kansas City, Greg Steinoff, of the state economic development department, told the Kansas City Star. If we can put together this legislation and have it passed, I think theyll give us a hard look. Of course, Canada would like to have all that, too, but the strength of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar is working against Bombardier building in its own country.

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