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2010 Person of the Year: South Carolina's Jack Ellenberg

An interview from Southern Business & Development

Jack Ellenberg has worked with the South Carolina Department of Commerce since 1996. In his years as an economic development practitioner, he has worked many of the Palmetto State's largest and most notable projects, including BMW, Michelin and Google. While BMW will likely remain South Carolina's most important catch in its economic development history to date, the recent Boeing deal directed by Ellenberg will certainly advance to a close second when it is all said and done.

While Jack Ellenberg is Southern Business & Development’s "2010 Person of the Year" for his work in landing the Boeing project, other South Carolina officials worked as a united front during the Boeing site selection process. Some of those individuals' roles in the landing of Boeing are explained at the end of this story.

In the meantime, we talked to Jack about the Boeing project. Here is what he said to us:

SB&D: Jack, you worked on the Boeing project from Day One. Tell us about it.

Ellenberg: We laid the groundwork for Boeing many years ago. If you go back to the beginning when Ed McCallum (the consultant with the firm McCallum Sweeney, who advised Boeing in 2003) had what was then the first final assembly line for the 787, we worked closely with them and put together a very compelling argument that South Carolina would be a great location for Boeing. Unfortunately, it didn't go in our favor then.
Full Interview Text click here

SC Department of Commerce Receives Business Facilities Gold Award for the Boeing Deal

The economic downturn did not take the steam out of Business Facilities’ annual Economic Development Deal of the Year Awards competition.

Agencies from 15 states nominated 19 big-ticket projects for consideration by our expert panel of judges, who evaluated economic impact statistics, job-creation estimates and project narratives submitted by the applicants. Several mega-projects—each with a projected overall economic impact of more than $1-trillion—vied for top honors in the 2009 Economic Development Deal of the Year Awards contest.

The results are in and Business Facilities is pleased to announce that South Carolina's Department of Commerce has taken the top prize, our Gold Award, for North Charleston’s selection by aircraft giant Boeing as the site of its Dreamliner 787 assembly plant.
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Boeing’s decision to locate its second 787 assembly facility in South Carolina instead of its traditional manufacturing base in Washington vaults the Palmetto State into a leadership position in aerospace manufacturing.

“The choice of North Charleston as a manufacturing site for Boeing’s best-selling commercial jet will have a seismic impact on South Carolina’s economic development,” noted Business Facilities Editor in Chief Jack Rogers.

Full article click here