ST Engineering held a special ribbon-cutting ceremony for its second new aircraft maintenance hangar at the Pensacola International Airport on Monday.
“The opening of this latest hangar for our airframe MRO complex comes at a time when air travel is rapidly recovering to pre-pandemic levels, giving us the necessary capacity to pursue new opportunities in the Americas and support our loyal customers,” said Jeffrey Lam, President of Commercial Aerospace at ST Engineering
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves acknowledged his predecessors who were in the office, Ashton Hayward and Grover Robinson, and the dozens of others who have worked to make the MRO campus possible.
“What I’m most excited for as we move ahead is we’ve seen amazing positive change in the city of Pensacola in the last 15 years,” said Reeves. “And what I really believe is the 2.0 for Pensacola is opening the funnel of opportunity not only for talented people to move here but also for opportunities for our children and our grandchildren to come home or to stay home.”
The new facility is the second of four hangars at an airframe MRO complex being developed by ST Engineering. When completed, it will be the largest MRO complex in the country and will make Pensacola the leader in aviation mechanic training. As part of the ceremony, Lam and Dr. Ed Meadows of Pensacola State College signed an agreement on establishing a training program at the college.
State Sen. Doug Broxson mentioned his conversation with Dr. Meadows after BP oil spill in 2010.
“I said, how do we create a world-class place to converge industry and education? How many places in this country have an airport next to a world-class community college and now with world-class business such as ST?”
He announced, “And this coming (legislative) session, we’re going to merge those three together, and we’re going have a charter vocational school that’s going to be embedded here across the street and it’s going to send a clear message to our students in high school. Yes, college is a great thing to do, but does it create a great job? We want to show you a way that you can go directly into the workplace and earn a good living and be close to your family.”
The new 177,000 sq. ft hangar features two bays capable of accommodating widebody aircraft, effectively doubling ST Engineering’s existing capacity in Pensacola and further solidifying its presence in the region. The hangar, which currently supports a major customer’s Airbus A300 program, started operations in January this year. When fully operational, it is expected to generate over 400 new high-value jobs.
Escambia County Commissioner Lumon May made the importance of job creation more personal for the audience.
“This is a collaboration as the mayor, city, federal, state, local city, county coming together for the great common good,” said May. “But more importantly to me, we are able to provide jobs at $50,000-$60,000 salaries without saying you having to have a PhD or master’s degree.”
He pointed to the rows of ST workers standing behind the audience, that’s important. “So what this means to me is when I walked into this building, I was greeted by a guy by the name of Edward Hayes. He grew up in Oakwood Terrace and Truman Arms, went to Woodham High School with me and now he’s employed, making a difference. What this means to me is Savon Mars, who grew up on the Superfund site on Pearl Street, walked up and hugged my neck because he’s part of the construction team. And so that’s what it means to me is we’re making a real difference in the lives of real people.”
State Rep. Alex Andrade was excited to celebrate the training opportunities with Pensacola State College and ST Aerospace. “We’re working to train up the next generation of folks to raise their families and to stay here and support them and seek a better way of it and pursue that American dream, something that’s very exciting.”
Collier Merrill, vice chairman of the Triumph Gulf Coast board, cited the efforts of Don Gaetz, the former president of the Florida Senate, and Lewis Bear, Jr. The pair developed the plan for the state to create Triumph Gulf Coast to use the fines paid by BP for its environmental disaster to rebuild and diversify Northwest Florida’s economy.
“David Bear, our chair, is with his father, who’s not doing well,” said Merrill, holding back tears. “Lewis has done a lot of things that he’s not going see complete, but he did this in his seventies. I remember 10 years ago he was talking to Mayor Hayward in Lewis’s role as PEDC chair about getting this thing going. And then he went on to become part of Triumph. And, you know, he’s 82 years old. He doesn’t need to do this, but he’s doing it.”
He asked the audience to share a moment of silence in Lewis Bear’s honor, who is with his family at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
It was a fitting moment for a significant milestone for Pensacola and Escambia County.
