Investor Watch: February 22, 2024

Framatome’s CEO tells Site Selection what’s behind the company’s $49.4 million, 515-job investment in Lynchburg.

DELAWARE

Delaware’s inclusion in the newly designated Greater Philadelphia Region Precision Medicine Tech Hub casts the spotlight on the state’s life sciences sector.

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AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Serving double duty as this week’s Site Selection Snapshot, Ron Starner’s analysis from our recently released Workforce 2024 report examines where attainable housing is happening and why it’s important.

Photo courtesy of Carolyn Lee Wills collection of Eastern Airlines’ Southern Region Public Relations Office records, Southern Labor Archives. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University

Did you know Eastern Airlines still existed? Or rather, exists again? Kansas City, Missouri, sure does. That’s where the domestic and international cargo airline announced yesterday it will locate its new headquarters, investing more than $4.7 million and creating 165 new jobs. The airline has had a presence in Kansas City since 2021, when it purchased Alta Aero Technic, a maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility, and formed Foxtrot Aero, a passenger-to-freighter design company. The company’s move of its headquarters will now consolidate all its operations to Kansas City, said a release from the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

In mid-January 2024, Eastern announced its acquisition of Hillwood Airways and its fleet of passenger and cargo Boeing 737s, adding to its fleet of B767 and B777 aircraft. Eastern is the first scheduled carrier to be certified in the U.S. since 2007. “Kansas City and its airport have a great legacy in our industry,” said Stephen Buscher, Eastern Airlines CFO. “We did look at a number of cities to rebase our headquarters, but the enthusiasm of Missouri and the city combined with the generous assistance of the Missouri Works program made our decision easy. The new terminal and our experience proved that it is a metropolitan area investing in its future, and we are proud to be a part of the new airport community.”

The Site Selection connection has more to do with our hometown than our archives. The former Eastern Airlines was based for years in Atlanta, as this 1981 photo of the Eastern Air Lines runway and gate at what was then called William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport attests. It was originally called Pitcairn Aviation in 1927 when it was the U.S. Postal Service contractor running mail to Atlanta from New York. Inside the domestic terminal at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport today you will find a bronze plaque with more than 7,000 name of pilots who flew for Eastern since 1928. Among those pilots was the late Captain James “Jim” Arnold FitzGibbon, who flew for Eastern for 35 years and was the father of Site Selection Vice President of Sales Charles FitzGibbon.

Past Site Selection contributor Ann Moline has worked with the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation over many years from her home base in the nation’s capital. Last week she drew our attention to a new suite of multimedia reports about the IFC’s work in four Sub-Saharan African countries. “Connected Communities.”

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During a tour of Charleston and Greenville two weeks ago as part of his panel moderation duties at the annual SCBio conference, Editor in Chief Adam Bruns was fortunate to be part of a tour of the MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital, which opened four years ago this month as part of the Medical University of South Carolina’s expanding health care and life sciences footprint in Charleston. This family respite area provides exactly what it promises in a facility that, no matter how thoughtfully it’s designed, nobody wants to be in, explained MUSC’s Integrated Center of Clinical Excellence Chief of Children’s and Women’s Services Dr. Mark Scheurer. Watch this space for more reporting from Bruns about the compelling history behind the hospital’s design and the compelling future MUSC has in store for the region’s life sciences profile.