Studer Community Institute

Aviation-themed tech parks a place to call home

June 18, 2015
/ Tom McLaughlin
/ economy

Okaloosa County Economic Development Council Executive Director Nathan Sparks can drive through the sprawling Fort Walton Beach Commerce and Technology Park and point out 20 businesses with ties to aerospace and aviation. He likes it that way. “Economic clusters are the Holy Grail of economic development,” Sparks said, referring to the tendency of like businesses, often competitors, to collect in the same vicinity and thrive by driving innovation and productivity. The park in Okaloosa County is one of the oldest aerospace business clusters in Northwest Florida, which boasts six military installations with aviation missions. It’s home to tenants that include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, DRS Training and Control Systems and more. The Fort Walton park is just one of the aerospace-focused parks that dot the region between New Orleans and Northwest Florida. Some are long-established, some just getting started. Some are small, others megasites. They were established because of nearby military activities, or because of space activities or commercial aviation. But no matter the reason, all are developing the aerospace cluster. The decision of Airbus to build A320 jetliners in Mobile, Ala., supercharged efforts to attract more aviation activities. Groups across the region are trying to lure suppliers as well as operations with no link to Airbus. Northwest Florida seems to be in great position to grow it’s aerospace footprint. It’s far enough from Mobile that it won’t compete with Airbus for workers, but close enough to make a pitch for suppliers. Florida recently was ranked the best in the country for the second year in a row in aerospace manufacturing attractiveness by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). And within the state, Northwest Florida is recognized as an aviation hotspot. There are sites in Pensacola, Milton, Crestview and Panama City, many touting access to runways and certified as ready for development. Across the state line, Alabama is home to one of the largest industrial sites in the Gulf Coast region, the 3,009-acre South Alabama Mega Site in Baldwin County. In neighboring Mobile County, the Mobile Airport Authority operates the 1,700-acre Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley, where Airbus will build jetliners, and the 3,000 acre Mobile Regional Airport, the commercial airport. Thirty-five miles away in Moss Point, Miss., is the Jackson County Aviation Technology Park, where Northrop Grumman does some of the work on Global Hawk and Fire Scout unmanned aerial systems. Not far away is Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, home of an Air National Guard Combat Readiness Training Center. Further west is NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Miss., where huge rocket engines are tested. The 3,900-acre John C. Stennis Space Center Technology Park’s tenants include Rolls-Royce, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Lockheed Martin. In New Orleans, NASA hopes to develop 300 under-utilized acres around Michoud Assembly Facility. The hope is the create an advanced manufacturing park. Michoud is where Boeing is doing work on NASA’s Space Launch System, and Lockheed Martin is building portions of the Orion All-Purpose Crew Vehicle. Condensed from the Gulf Coast Aerospace Corridor 2015-2016. Read more here. Gulf_Coast_Aerospace_Corridor.com is a website created in 2008 to highlight aerospace activities along the Interstate 10 corridor between New Orleans and Northwest Florida. It includes reference material, job postings, a daily aerospace newsfeed and weekly column. In 2011, the website teamed with several journalists to create the Gulf Coast Reporters’ League, which writes and publishes an annual book about aerospace in the region. The first book was published in June 2011. In September 2013, the League launched an eight-page quarterly aerospace newsletter, which became a bimonthly in August 2014 after the League published the fourth edition of the annual. All the books can be found at: www.gulfcoastaerospacecorridor.com/gcacbooksall.html and all the newsletters can be found at www.gulfcoastaerospacecorridor.com/gcacnewslettersal

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Aviation-themed tech parks a place to call home

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