Were not having a lot of trouble recruiting them, but getting them trained is the
bottleneck, Segrave said in an interview. Getting slots for simulators at the sim centers all over the country, and the delay and the expense on top of it, is why this was so important to us.
Segrave wanted the training center in Kinston, both for efficiency and to help steep pilots in company culture. But he said other airports were making offers.
So flyExclusive hired a lobbyist and, along with the Global TransPark, went to lawmakers looking for money.
So its where can we make our best
deal, he said. That said, we want to be here. Wed like to come up with the best deal and build our campus out and our business right here in Eastern North Carolina.
Segrave said he isnt sure who put the $30 million into the state budget, which is crafted behind closed doors. Neither House Speaker Tim Moore nor
Senate leader Phil Bergers offices responded to repeated requests for comment about the money from The News & Observer.
Segrave estimates
the building will cost between $35 million and $40 million, with flyExclusive making up the difference. The company will also install three flight simulators, at a cost of $12 million each.
STATE GOVERNMENT HAS HELPED FLYEXCLUSIVE GROW
FlyExclusive has gotten help from the state before. In 2018, the company received a $2.3 million Job Development Investment Grant or JDIG, $2 million
from NCDOT and $1 million from the N.C. Global TransPark Foundation to help build the paint buildings. In that case, the company had to create 145 jobs to receive the money, something it has done.
In contrast, there are no strings attached to the $30 million grant in the state budget. But the Global TransPark will own the building that it will
lease to flyExclusive through a long-term agreement that is still being worked out.
So we get the benefit of that $30 million investment for
some period of time, Segrave said. But they invested in themselves, and they still own it.
The General Assembly created the N.C. Global
TransPark in the early 1990s as a place where companies would set up manufacturing plants around a runway, shuttling components in and completed products out.
But the park, about 80 miles southeast of Raleigh, has struggled to attract tenants, and most of its 2,500 acres remain empty. FlyExclusive is the parks
largest employer, followed by Spirit Aerosystems, which produces fuselage sections for Airbus passenger jets and ships them to France, through the port at Morehead City, for final assembly.
The General Assembly hopes to attract more. In addition to the flyExclusive grant, this years budget includes $175 million over the next two years
to build a Navy aircraft repair and overhaul facility. The Navys Fleet Readiness Center East at Cherry Point leased a hangar at the TransPark in 2020 to work on H1 helicopters and is interested in expanding, according to NCDOT spokeswoman
Bridgette Barthe.
The budget anticipates the state eventually spending $350 million on the Navy facility, assuming the state and federal governments
can settle on a lease agreement. The TransPark would repay the money over time when the Navy starts paying rent.
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