CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — Gov. Jay Nixon used his speech in front of business and civic leaders at the annual Progress 64 West luncheon today to reinforce his support for a potential deal with Boeing and quell growing skepticism that Missouri’s chances at securing it are minimal.
Nixon said his office received a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) last Friday, not long after Boeing announced it would not be building its new twin-engine airliner,
the 777X, in Seattle, Wa. After the local machinists union rejected a pension deal that would have brought the new manufacturing jobs to the state, Missouri, along with several other states, stepped up to offer a substitute.
Boeing would be building a massive warehouse, more than one million square feet, to house the manufacturing of the new plane and would bring approximately 16,000 immediate, full-time jobs to the St. Louis region. Nixon is eyeing a deal worth more than $5 billion in tax breaks and credits for Boeing if they chose Missouri, which, if passed, would be the largest single economic development deal in the state’s history.
While Nixon would have to call a special session of the legislature in order to approve the deal, he declined to offer a timeline yet, saying he still needed to meet with some legislative leaders to discuss specifics.
“I’ve got meetings with legislative leaders and those meetings will certainly discuss progress and a timeline, but right now I’m not ready to say for certain what that timeline will look like,” Nixon said. “But for me, it’s a matter of days, not weeks.”
Nixon said he was hoping to be able to send an offer to Boeing by early to mid December, and that he was very hopeful, given Boeing’s existing Missouri presence, that the Show-Me state was “near the top of the list.”
“We’re going to move very quickly, I can tell you it is going to be a very short Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Nixon said. “But when you have an historic opportunity like this, you’re going to have to move fast.”
Collin Reischman was the Managing Editor for The Missouri Times, and a graduate of Webster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.
