By ESTES THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press

KINSTON, N.C. — After a nearly two-decade wait, a major tenant is finally coming to the much ballyhooed Global TransPark, a project originally designed to boost the economy of eastern North Carolina.

The state Commerce Department said Wednesday that aircraft parts supplier Spirit AeroSystems has agreed to hire 1,031 workers over five years at a new facility it will build at the state-owned industrial park. The TransPark has received more than $80 million in state and federal funds since it opened in 1991 and had failed until now to attract an anchor tenant.

The jobs at the aircraft parts supplier will pay an average of $48,122 annually, compared with the average yearly wage of $27,042 in Lenoir County.

The state is offering Wichita, Kan.-based Spirit a massive incentive package worth more than $125 million. It includes a $5 million grant and more than $20 million, payable over 12 years, tied to the creation of jobs at the plant.

The Golden Leaf Foundation, a nonprofit charged with overseeing the state's share of tobacco-settlement money, also approved spending $100 million to build the company's first new building, which the state will own and Spirit will occupy. Spirit will pay rent on the building, but the lease rate has yet to be set.

The company also committed to spending $100 million on additional facilities over the next six years.

Spirit bills itself as the world's largest supplier of commercial airplane assemblies and components for clients that include Airbus, Gulfstream and Cessna. The company plans to make composite fuselages and engine components at the TransPark, primarily for the Airbus A350.

"These are the anchor jobs around the aeronautical industry that we want to build. It shows if you don't give up great things will happen," said Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the Democratic nominee for governor.

The company had nearly $4 billion in revenues last year. A spinoff from Boeing Co., Spirit has about 14,000 employees at plants in Kansas, Oklahoma, Scotland and England, and it also plans to build a plant in Malaysia next year.

The area has an 11,500-foot runway and more than 2,000 acres of land for development as well as a training center that can be used for meetings and classes. About 2,000 people work near the TransPark, but most were already working in the area before the park opened.

About 365 people currently work at the TransPark among 12 tenants, including state agencies and 21 TransPark employees. Tenants include an aircraft sales and charter firm, an air cargo and maintenance company, a logistics firm that operates the TransPark's foreign trade zone and a pilot training company.

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Associated Press writer Gary D. Robertson contributed to this story from Raleigh.