It's confirmed, the Global TransPark has landed its first major tenant.

Spirit AeroSystems will locate an aircraft component plant at GTP, employing some 1,100 workers.

Governor Mike Easley made the announcement this morning at GTP.

Lenoir County commissioners met this morning, prior to the official announcement. The county will give the company tax incentives of some $16-million over the next 20 years.

Lenoir County has been working for the past 18 months to 2 years to land Spirit. County commissioners were told the company plans to invest $668 million into their new plant over the next 20 years.

The state Commerce Department said Wednesday that Spirit has agreed to hire 1,031 workers over five years at a new facility it will build at the state-owned industrial park.

The jobs at the aircraft parts supplier will pay an average of $48,122 annually, compared with the average yearly wage of $27,042 in Lenoir County. The state is offering Spirit an incentive package worth more than $20 million, payable over 12 years.

The company plans to make fuselages for the Airbus A350 XWB at the TransPark. The company says the Kinston location will give it better access to Airbus.

Spirit says it will hire 500 people initially, then employ up to a thousand workers when the facility is completed.

State Incentives

To land Spirit, the state had to offer them millions of dollars in incentives and grants.

Those include:

$5 million grant from the state’s One North Carolina Fund,
Up to $20.23 million in a Job Development Investment Grants
$100 Golden LEAF Foundation grant for the GTP Authority to construct the initial buildings for the new Spirit facility.

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There is widespread speculation that Kinston's Global TransPark will get it's first substantial tenant today, after years of false starts.

This evening Lenoir County's economic developer said there would be an economic development announcement at the GTP Wednesday morning at 11:00 a.m.

At that announcement will be Governor Mike Easley, along with members of the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the Golden Leaf Foundation and other city and county leaders.

Several newspapers have reported that Spirit AeroSystems, a Wichita, Kansas based supplier of commercial airplane assemblies and components, would build a $600 million plant at the TransPark. Spirit is expected to initially have 1,100 employees and could grow several times that down the road.

Kinston City Council, Lenior County Commissioners, and members of the GTP board all have special meetings scheduled for 9:45 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. to discuss "economic incentives" and "industrial recruitment".

The TransPark was created in 1991, but has never really taken off. FedEx decided to locate in Greensboro in 1998 with it's hub, while GTP was considered by Boeing five years ago for an aircraft assembly plant.