ANATOMY OF THE DEAL:
Cirrus Aircraft On May 6, a crowd gathered on the tarmac of McGhee Tyson Airport for a special announcement from Gov. Bill Haslam. With the runway as his backdrop, the governor announced the newest arrival to the airport — Cirrus Aircraft. In a $15 million investment, the Duluth, Minn.based general aviation company will be expanding its operations to East Tennessee with its new customer experience center located at the airport. Deemed the Vision Center, the facility will become a flagship location for all Cirrus Aircraft pilot, owner, and customer activities — including sales, delivery, training, maintenance, and support personalization. Cirrus’ expansion will add 170 jobs to the Knoxville area. The company’s decision to call Knoxville home was the result of a collaborative recruitment effort between the state of Tennessee, Oak Ridge Na-
tional Laboratory, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, the Blount Partnership, and the Knoxville Chamber. Together, this team worked for nearly a year to show Cirrus that Knoxville was the perfect fit.
SITE SCOUTING Cirrus Aircraft began scouting sites for its Vision Center in June 2014. Bill King, vice president of business administration for Cirrus, said the company had very specific parameters for the location of the new facility. “We started the process by creating a definition of the experience we wanted our customers to have at any given location,” King said. “We wanted it to be south of the Mason-Dixon line, because believe it or not some people don’t want to take delivery of an airplane in December,
January, February, or March in Duluth,” he added. In addition to favorable weather, the site’s surrounding area needed to offer amenities that were sufficient to the Cirrus customer base, whose average net worth is more than $10 million. “We wanted to give our customer an experience that would be very conducive to learning; very conducive to wanting to come back and visit; and that had an extraordinary history to it that made it an inviting community for the customer base to come back year after year,” King said. With these elements in mind, the company narrowed down its list of states with potential sites from 14 to eight, with Tennessee being one of them. Cirrus then issued an exclusive invitation
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to each state’s economic development office. Knoxville Chamber, and the Blount Partnership hit the During the visit, each entity on the Knoxville team, “During the site selection process, we called each ground working on the recruitment process that would along with representatives from Visit Knoxville, gave the of the state economic development representatives be code-named “Project Thunder.” company a presentation on what the area had to offer. that we were working with and invited them to the EAA Cirrus executives arrived in Knoxville that fall for the Cirrus was then given the grand tour of the region’s AirVenture Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin,” King said. official site visit. However, it wasn’t their first visit to the tourism destinations. “(We wanted these states) to see how we operate as a area. Company officials had conducted several under“We took the Cirrus team to Blackberry Farm, company and to learn more about our sphere of influthe-radar visits to scout the area themselves in the downtown Knoxville, the Smoky Mountains, and that ence in the aviation industry.” months prior. whole atmosphere just really rang true to them on how The invitation piqued the interest of Alex Bertelli, “These visits were conducted to assure we saw each they were going to meet their customers’ needs and a project manager with the Tennessee Department of of the candidate communities in a ‘normal’ state and not expectations,” Bertelli said. Economic and Community Development. simply trying to impress a potential business client,” King In addition to premier tourism spots, the Cirrus group “Being an aviator, I knew from experience that Cirrus said. “The visits included flying into the local airport and was helicoptered into ORNL for a look at the computawas a premier company and if you ever tional science, neutron science, and carbon had the opportunity to work with them you fiber facilities. Through the state’s manudefinitely should,” he said. “I told my boss facturing innovation program called RevV, this is an opportunity we shouldn’t pass Cirrus would have access to these facilities up, and to get in front of a company like for research and future product development. Cirrus when they have a project is really “It wasn’t a hard sell once we showed important.” them the facilities and that we could help Bertelli accepted Tennessee’s invitation them solve problems,” Smith said. “The labo— the only invited state to do so — and ratory is an interesting and unique capability brought along Jeff Smith, the deputy for that the state can put on the table, and other operations at ORNL, to tout the technostates find it difficult to offer.” logical assets that would be available to While Cirrus would have also had access Cirrus through the lab. However, at the to ORNL if it had chosen Smyrna, Bertelli time, McGhee Tyson wasn’t on the list of said McGhee Tyson’s proximity to the lab sites Cirrus was considering in the state. would be an added perk. Bertelli had recommended the Tri-Cities “Cirrus manufactures a composite aircraft; Regional Airport, Smyrna Airport, and the it’s got carbon fiber in it,” he said. “InnovaNashville area’s John C. Tune Airport for tion Valley has been recruiting carbon fiber Tennessee’s front-runners. companies based on the synergies at the lab. After spending time with Cirrus and obFrom a manufacturing and synergy standserving how the company took care of its point, it just made sense on the development clients, Smith said he suggested Knoxville side to locate Cirrus to Knoxville.” to Bertelli as a possibility. “Cirrus was making this big push for THE SHORT LIST creating a world-class customer experiAfter another cut, Cirrus narrowed its list ence, and I said if that’s what they’re after of states to Texas, North Carolina, Florida, then the Knoxville region has some assets Georgia, and Tennessee. Two sites in Tenthat can fit very well in that vein,” said nessee were left standing — Knoxville and Smith, who also serves on the board of Smyrna. In December, the two competing Gov. Bill Haslam welcomed Cirrus Aircraft to its new home at McGhee Tyson commissioners for the airport authority. Tennessee locations were invited to Duluth to Airport on May 6. “I initially didn’t consider Knoxville present their final pitches. because (Cirrus was) familiar with the Doug Lawyer, vice president of economic airport and had asked to see what else Tennessee had carefully grading each community on a number of facdevelopment for the Knoxville Chamber; Bryan Daniels, to offer,” Bertelli said. “But after (closer consideration) tors — including obvious ones such as quality of airport president and CEO of the Blount Partnership; Rachel I really liked the airport, its location in Innovation Valley, and airport operations — as well as driving into town Trump, the Blount Partnership’s director of economic its proximity to the lab, Blackberry Farm, the Smoky and identifying various hospitality-related assets, such as development; and ORNL’s Smith were en route to the Mountains, and other amenities.” quality restaurants and hotels.” two-day pitch, which included a dinner that evening with King said each contending community was graded on Cirrus and Smyrna, when their flight from Chicago to ‘PROJECT THUNDER’ a total of 30 different factors. Knoxville passed the test Duluth was canceled because of winter weather. With McGhee Tyson Airport officially under considand was given the opportunity to host the Cirrus senior “We knew we had to get to that dinner,” recalled eration, TVA, ORNL, the airport authority, ECD, the management team for a formal visit. Lawyer. “We didn’t want Smyrna to have any advan-
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tage.” The Knoxville team wanted a seat at the table — literally — so they rented a car and began an eight-hour drive through dense fog to Duluth. The team arrived just after appetizers were served, Lawyer said, and the Cirrus executives were not only shocked to see them, but impressed with their dedication to the deal. The next morning, Lawyer, Daniels, Smith, and airport authority President Bill Marrison presented Innovation Valley’s pitch, which the state, TVA, and other local entities had helped prepare. “Our goal is to highlight the location’s multiple strengths and attributes, including quality of life, workforce, and economic viability,” said Adam Murray, target market specialist with TVA Economic Development in global business. “We worked with the local entities, Tennessee ECD, and the airport to meet Cirrus’ needs in order to facilitate the decision to locate its facility in the Knoxville region.”
Concept art of Cirrus’ Vision Center that will be located at McGhee Tyson Airport.
A REGIONAL WIN In late March, Cirrus notified the Knoxville team that after a unanimous recommendation from the company’s board of directors, McGhee Tyson would be the new home of the Vision Center. “The single most important thing that we have to get right every day is how we deal with our customers,” King said. “Our customers have come to expect a lot from us, and we intend to not only deliver but exceed on the area where we’ve always delivered well. And we certainly believe Knoxville will play a critical role in our growth.” “Having Cirrus Aircraft at McGhee Tyson Airport will create new jobs, new community research partnerships, and new opportunities for the people of East Tennessee,” said Jim Evans, vice president of marketing and air service development for the airport authority. “Their customer-focused approach and their high-tech operation are extremely important to our airport and to the aviation industry. Cirrus Aircraft’s presence at our airport provides worldwide exposure for our airport and for our region in the general aviation industry.” King said Cirrus was impressed with the seamless coordination among all the entities that played a role in recruiting the company. “This was a remarkable event and a truly impressive joint effort on the part of state, regional, and local critical players, all of whom had to make sure the bigger picture was more important than any individual interest,” King
said. Lawyer noted that this win would not have been possible had it not been for the regional partnership. “The Cirrus recruitment project really exemplifies how a region can work together,” he said. “This project worked across multiple boundaries — government, organization, local entities — everyone literally worked off the same page.” Daniels agreed. “There’s a deep appreciation for all the entities and different parties who came together to make this project happen,” he said. “No one entity could have convinced the company to locate here. It really took a team effort to showcase the attributes that we have here. It shows the importance of the Knox/Blount areas continuing to cooperate together. We hope more and more of these projects materialize.”
NEXT STEPS Over the next year, Cirrus will be working with Blaine Construction and Partners Development to build the Vision Center at the West Aviation Area of McGhee Tyson. The location will give the company’s facility direct access to the airport’s two 9,000-foot all-weather runways. Cirrus hopes to break ground on the new location in early fall. In the meantime, through a grant from the RevV program, Cirrus is already working with ORNL to see
how the company can collaborate on new technology for its aircraft. “It will be great to work with them on a couple of new designs of aircraft, but we see a wonderful relationship developing in helping us to understand what are the opportunities to modify how we do business today, how we do manufacturing today, how do we bring that technology through the constraints of the Federal Aviation Administration certification program,” King said. As for future aerospace recruitment to the state, Bertelli said the success of landing Cirrus in Knoxville will help tremendously. “This is a world-class company that was looking and considering eight other states, and they chose Tennessee, which traditionally is not an aerospace state, it’s an automotive state,” Bertelli said. “We have a lot to offer with labor and research and development, and with local atmosphere and quality of life that is very competitive with other states. “If Cirrus Aircraft, a world-class brand, was considering Tennessee and ultimately located here, (we can tell potential clients) they should take a look at what we have to offer.”
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Watch video from the Cirrus Aircraft announcement on the Knoxville Chamber’s YouTube channel.