Bay County Takes Flight

Bay County’s Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport, which opened in 2010, will soon get its first aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility. Premier Aviation, a leading full-service airframe maintenance provider, based in Quebec City, Canada, plans to construct a 100,000-square-foot “center of excellence” to service the needs of regional jets — those with a passenger capacity ranging from 40 to 106 seats, used mostly by the major airlines for shorter flights to smaller destinations. Chief manufacturers in this market include Embraer S.A., a Brazilian multinational aerospace corporation, and ATR, a Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Blagnac, France.

Dubbed “Project Maple,” the $32.5 million capital investment, which is expected to create some 250 high-paying jobs over the next four years, began to take shape at the MRO Americas conference in Dallas, Texas, in 2020 when members of the Bay County Economic Development Alliance (EDA) met with Premier’s executives after learning that the company wished to make its initial foray into the U.S. market and needed an airport with a runway long enough to accommodate its customers’ jets. “And we had a shovel-ready site that’s adjacent to our 10,000-foot runway at the airport,” recounted EDA’s president and CEO, Becca Hardin. 

J.C. Tewfik. Photo Courtesy of Premier Aviation

Of course, other airports have long runways too, and the company was still looking around for its first U.S. operation. “We looked at three locations — Oklahoma, Las Vegas and Michigan,” said J.C. Tewfik, vice president of sales at Premier Aviation. “Florida was the most appealing.” Hardin agreed that, “It was competitive, so we had to first convince them that Bay County was the place to come.” 

Various stakeholders around the Panhandle, such as the EDA and the Airport Authority, and local economic underwriters, stitched together a unique package of incentives to make Bay County more appealing. Two more notable partners are Space Florida, an aerospace economic development agency of the State of Florida and Triumph Gulf Coast, Inc. Space Florida was founded in 2006 with a mandate to work with commercial space companies, other governmental agencies and academic institutions to develop space-related infrastructure. Triumph Gulf Coast, Inc. administers monies from the $1.5 billion awarded to the Sunshine State by BP in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. 

“Working with Triumph Gulf Coast, we were able to solidify $11.25 million on a grant in support of the construction of the hangar, and that was very attractive to the company as they enter the U.S. market,” Hardin explained. “And we structured this deal with Space Florida. It’s a quasi-governmental group that acts as a pass-through conduit. They can own a title to hangars, buildings and equipment and lease them long-term to the company. That way, the company gets a 100% savings on ad valorem property taxes; they don’t have to pay any ad valorem tax on the building or equipment. So, over a 30-year lease period, that’s another nice incentive.”

Premier Aviation, a leading full-service airframe maintenance provider, is based in Quebec City, Canada. Photo Courtesy of Premier Aviation

Tewfik admitted, “There were financial incentives in order to move to Florida,” but another element of great importance to Premier was the presence of Haney Technical College in Panama City. Tewfik added, “Our biggest challenge in Quebec City, and anywhere else in the world, is having enough people to come and work. Haney College is producing 20 to 40 aircraft technicians every year, and then they go out of the county to work. Being the first MRO on-site, we hope to be able to capitalize on that most important asset. And since we’ve been announcing that we want to go there, there are older students who have left the county and are calling to inquire if we are going to hire them. So, this is very promising for us.”

The new hangar, dubbed “Project Maple,” will offer full-service airframe maintenance with a 100,000-square-foot facility to service the needs of regional jets. Photo Courtesy of Premier Aviation

Another element that made Bay County attractive was proximity to the main hubs, Tewfik explained. “We wanted to have a foothold in the United States, and Florida is well-positioned to not only capture American business but potentially South American. But the biggest incentive was the community. Every time we came down for a meeting, they were talking about community. That just resonated with us. In Quebec City, it’s the same thing; we’re a very small community, and everybody knows one another. So, it was like a sister city for us.”

Parker McClellan, the Airport Authority’s executive director, echoed this sentiment. “We both felt it was the right fit. They are a smaller company, and when they saw what Bay County had to offer, it was very similar to what they have in Quebec City in terms of airport relations and relations within the community. Premier’s company values are similar to those of our community. So, there was a lot of synergy there.”

Premier plans to break ground sometime in the fall and open for business by late 2025. And McClellan sees this as a harbinger of things to come. “Our goal at the airport is to continue to create jobs in our community, and we’re going to continue to market available land for other maintenance and repair companies to come to the airport,” he stated. “It grows jobs in our community, it grows passenger traffic and it enhances the education capability of our community as we continue to grow.”