With an Italian company being part of the joint venture, Charleston's relative cosmopolitan nature gave the city an advantage.
      For Giuseppe Giordo, president and CEO of Alenia North America, Charleston just had a European feel
about it.
      "Charleston offered friendship and commonality in terms of a European mentality," Giordo tells Site Selection. (Since 1977, the city has hosted Spoleto Festival USA, an international arts event modeled after a festival held in Spoleto, Italy, since 1958.)
      The Euro-friendly aspect of Charleston notwithstanding, Giordo says it was the active involvement of state and local officials that ultimately convinced the Italian manufacturer to sign on to the deal.
      "Starting at the local level, everyone wants to have Charleston growing," Giordo says. "We were im-pressed with the management and the leadership that the people we were dealing with showed to us — not only the state officials, but also the congressional delegation."
      Cementing the deal took considerable jetting around the globe for Gov. Mark Sanford, Faith and members of that congressional delegation.
      "Business these days is all about going eyeball to eyeball," Sanford says in an interview. "If somebody's going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars halfway around the globe, they're going to want to look you in the eye. That's ultimately why I got personally involved."
      During the process, Sanford hopped on a 4 a.m. flight to Alabama in order to personally escort Roberto Assereto, Alenia's COO, on a flight back to Charleston.
      "On the return flight, I asked the pilot to drop down to a hundred feet as we came up the coastline so Roberto could see the beaches, marshes and creeks up close. That's quite an impressive way to come into town."
      U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham and U.S. Rep. John Spratt did their part, too. Carrying a letter of endorsement from the state's entire congressional delegation, they flew to the Farnborough International Air Show in England last August to meet with top Vought and Alenia brass.