GREENSBORO — Money needed to convince Honda Aircraft Co. to expand its operation at Piedmont Triad International Airport has begun to flow.
And with the funds have come new details about the proposed $80 million project.
On Thursday, the Golden Leaf Foundation in Rocky Mount approved a $1 million grant to the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority, part of the $8.1 million the agency needs for infrastructure improvements requested by Honda.
Honda also has asked Guilford County and the city of Greensboro for a combined $1.29 million in incentives to expand its HondaJet operation at the airport.
“We gave them $1 million for a project code named 'Icing,’” said Dan Gerlach, foundation president. “It would be used to pay for part of a taxiway.”
Documents provided to foundation board members also say:
* The company wants to upfit space in an existing research and development building to manufacture aircraft components such as doors, wings and other parts.
The value of that addition has not been determined.
* The company would build two additional buildings — an 87,000-square-foot maintenance and repair operation valued at $20 million and a 100,000-square-foot aircraft parts distribution center worth $6.5 million.
The latter building likely would supply Honda’s other sales and service centers around the country.
* The 419 jobs associated with the project would be created between the fourth quarter of 2011 and the fourth quarter of 2014.
While the grant documents did not break down how many jobs would be provided by each part of the proposed expansion, a local official has called the manufacturing section “the big prize.”
* The construction phase would create between 397 and 490 jobs.
* Honda would expand its existing 67-acre campus at PTI by an additional 40 acres, apparently to accommodate the new buildings.
Local officials said that PTI could land one, two or three parts of the project, all of them or none of them.
“All those scenarios are possible,” said Yvonne J. Johnson, a former Greensboro mayor and a member of the Golden Leaf board. “We think we will get something. ... I supported the grant wholeheartedly.”
Gerlach said the foundation, which administers part of the state’s 1998 settlement with cigarette makers, would pay the grant only if the authority can fund the whole project.
Kevin Baker, the airport authority’s executive director, would not comment on where he would get the rest of the money or on Honda’s plans.
“This is great,” Baker said of the grant. “If they end up picking our airport, this will be a big help.”
Johnson said the grant sends a positive signal to Honda. “It says, 'We appreciate you. We want you to stay. We want you to expand,’” she said. “'And here’s some money.’”
When Honda announced in 2007 that it would manufacture its $4.5 million HondaJet here, it won $1.4 million in local incentives and $6.7 million in state assistance.
Efforts to reach Honda spokesman Stephen Keeney for comment on Friday were unsuccessful. But on Thursday, he declined to provide additional details about the company’s plans.
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