ST ENGINEERING EXPANDS FOOTPRINT

Escambia County Commissioner Lumon May made the importance of job creation more personal for the audience.

"This is a collaboration as the mayor, city, federal, state, local city, county coming together for the great common good," said May, who chairs the county commission. "But more importantly to me, we are able to provide jobs at $50,000-$60,000 salaries without saying you must have a PhD or master's degree."

Airport on Monday, Feb. 27.

"The opening of this latest hangar for our airframe MRO complex comes at a time when air travel is rapidly recovering to pre-pandemic levels, giving us the necessary capacity to pursue new opportunities in the Americas and support our loyal customers," said Jeffrey Lam, president of Commercial Aerospace at ST Engineering.

ST Engineering North America President Timothy McBride expressed the company's appreciation to the local, state and federal officials for their continued support for the MRO complex in Florida and reiterated ST Engineering's commitment.

"As the aviation industry continues to recover from the pandemic, the airframe Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul complex will create hundreds of new job opportunities in the region," said McBride. "We are dedicated to working with state and local leaders to maintain Northwest Florida's status as a national hub for the aviation industry and to bring more highquality engineering and aviation maintenance jobs to the community."

Aviation Footprint

The initial Memorandum of Understanding between ST Engineering and the city of Pensacola was signed in December 2013 during Mayor Ashton Hayward's first term. The city agreed to build a hangar for $37,344,300, with funding help from the Florida Department of Transportation, the Industry Recruitment, Retention and Expansion Fund, Federal Airport Improvement Program and Escambia County. ST Engineering agreed to create 300 jobs and invest $7.2 million in the facility. The hangar was completed in June 2018.

In October 2018, weeks before leaving office, Hayward announced the $210 million Project Titan that would add three more hangars and increase the jobs to 1,700. Pulling together the same group of partners and Triumph Gulf Coast, he secured commitments for $180 million but left office with his successor needing to find another $30 million.

needed to pledge the balance for the expansion.

At the ceremony, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves acknowledged his predecessors, Hayward and Grover Robinson, and the dozens of others who have worked to make the MRO campus possible.

"What I'm most excited for as we move ahead is we've seen amazing positive change in the city of Pensacola in the last 15 years," said Reeves. "And what I really believe is the 2.0 for Pensacola is opening the funnel of opportunity not only for talented people to move here but also for opportunities for our children and our grandchildren to come home or stay home."

He continued, "That's what makes me so, so excited about this partnership is that 2.0— the ability for us to say, you can live in Pensacola, Florida; you can do to Pensacola, Florida; and have a great life and a great quality of life for yourself and your family."

The new facility is the second of four hangars at an airframe MRO complex developed by ST Engineering. When completed, it will be the country's largest MRO complex, making Pensacola the leader in aviation mechanic training. As part of the ceremony, Lam and Dr. Ed Meadows of Pensacola State College signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish an Aviation Training Academy.

Under the MOU, ST Engineering and Pensacola State will collaborate to develop a Federal Aviation Administration Part 147 Aircraft Maintenance Technician School at the Pensacola International Airport. ST Engineering will develop an apprenticeship program and provide "direct to industry" job opportunities for the academy's apprentices, while Pensacola State College will seek FAA approval for the certification of the academy partnership and work together with ST Engineering to strengthen public awareness of career opportunities in the aviation sector.

Dr. Meadows explained the academy to Inweekly after the ceremony. "In working with our tional training academy that will allow us not only the next phase, an educational facility will be located with hangar three on the west side of the airport, off of Tippin Avenue, right across the street from our campus."

Targeting to roll out training in 2024, the academy will help support the talent needs of ST Engineering's airframe MRO complex in Pensacola, as well as meet the hiring needs of the aviation industry in the region, including Leonardo Helicopters in Santa Rosa County.

"The charter academy is the only way you can get the number of mechanics that both the Leonardo Helicopter and ST Engineering need," said Dr. Meadows

About Family

State Sen. Doug Broxson mentioned his conversation with Dr. Meadows after the BP oil spill in 2010 about attracting new jobs to the area. "How do we create a world-class place to converge industry and education? How many places in this country have an airport next to a world-class community college and now with world-class business such as ST?"

He announced, "And this coming (legislative) session, we're going to merge those three together, and we're going have a charter vocational school that's going to be embedded here across the street, and it's going to send a clear message to our students in high school. Yes, college is a great thing to do, but does it create a great job? We want to show you a way that you can go directly into the workplace and earn a good living and be close to your family."

The new 177,000-square-foot hangar features two bays capable of accommodating widebody aircraft, effectively doubling ST Engineering's existing capacity in Pensacola and further solidifying its regional presence. The hangar, which currently supports a major customer's Airbus A300 program, started operations in January this year. When fully operational, it is expected to generate over 400 new high-value job opportunities for the local community.

He pointed to the rows of ST workers standing behind the audience. "So what this means to me is when I walked into this building, I was greeted by a guy by the name of Edward Hayes. He grew up in Oakwood Terrace and Truman Arms, went to Woodham High School with me, and now he's employed, making a difference. What this means to me is Savon Mars, who grew up on the Superfund site on Pearl Street, walked up and hugged my neck because he's part of the construction team. And so that's what it means to me is we're making a real difference in the lives of real people."

The next phase includes two more hangars on the west side of the Pensacola International Airport near 12th Avenue. Last May, ST Engineering and United Airlines, Inc. signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the MRO Americas 2022 conference in Dallas. Under the MOU, ST Engineering will extend its heavy maintenance support to United by servicing additional narrowbody aircraft at the airframe MRO complex.

State Rep. Alex Andrade tied the MRO complex and economic development to family. "When you talk about economic development, what you're really talking about is family, the concept of people being able to have a job to support their family in an accessible way in the local community."

He added, "We're working to train up the next generation of folks to raise their families and to stay here and support them and seek a better way of it and pursue that American dream, something that's very exciting."

Collier Merrill, vice chairman of Triumph Gulf Coast, built on Andrade's comments, citing the efforts of Don Gaetz, the former Florida Senate president, and Lewis Bear Jr. The pair developed the plan for the state to create Triumph Gulf Coast to use the fines paid by BP for its environmental disaster to rebuild and diversify Northwest Florida's economy.

"David Bear, our chair, is with his father, who's not doing well," said Merrill, holding back tears. "Lewis had done a lot of things that he's not going see complete, but he did this in his 70s. I remember 10 years ago, he was talking to Mayor Hayward in Lewis's role as PEDC chair about getting this thing going. And then he went on to become part of Triumph. And, you know, he's 82 years old. He doesn't need to do this, but he's doing it."

He asked the audience to share a moment of silence in Bear's honor, who passed away later in the week. The special tribute made the significance of the ribbon-cutting ceremony that much more memorable for those in attendance. {in}