Driving north on Randolph Road just outside of Moses Lake you notice something out of place. Amid the sagebrush and bare fields that surround the Grant County International Airport is a complex of white banquet tents where a large crowd is gathering. As you come closer you see flags fluttering atop of newly installed poles; an American flag, a German flag, a Washington State flag, and a white flag with blue lettering that you don’t recognize. As you come even closer you can make out the words on this new flag. It reads, “SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers A BMW Group and SGL Group Joint Venture.”
This is the right place. You park the car and join the crowd reflecting on all the work that has brought you to this point. It was just less than a year ago that you received the first communication from the site selection firm McCallum Sweeney. It came via an e-mail that was forwarded on from the Washington State Department of Commerce. It was a short concise email that simply stated that a company was looking for 120 acres and competitive electric rates. When you responded to that first e-mail you had no idea that it would end here, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the most cost efficient and state-of-the-art carbon fiber manufacturing facility in the world.
It wasn’t an easy path. Like all big economic development projects the devil is in the details and it was your job to make sure every “i” was dotted and every “t” was crossed. Shortly after that first e-mail, you received a phone call directly from McCallum Sweeney and a site checklist with over 115 key criteria. Over the next few months you and the rest of the Grant County EDC staff would spend hours and hours putting together the information necessary to address all these points. You enlisted the help of the County, both the Port and the City of Moses Lake, Grant County PUD and other utilities, local property owners and local businesses, Big Bend Community College, WorkSource, state and federal legislators, the Department of Commerce, Ecology, and even the Governor’s Office.
There were conference calls and site visits. Meetings in Olympia and in Seattle. You even spent some time in Washington DC related to the project. Through all of this, summer turned to fall, and fall into winter. One by one each of the criteria on the checklist was accounted for. Letters of support and commitment were written. The smallest stone was not left unturned. You smile as you remember making phone calls to the engineering departments of every 4-year university within 120 miles to find out the number of students enrolled and how large the 2010 graduating class was. Like all big economic development projects the devil was in the details and you made sure you were on top of all the details.
Jörg Pohlman and Andreas Wüllner, Managing Directors for SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers
The groundbreaking ceremony starts and Jörg Pohlman and Andreas Wüllner, the Managing Directors for SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers take the stage. They tell a story that goes back even farther than the year that you have been involved with the project. It goes all the way back to late 2007 when BMW launched “Project i” to develop new sustainable and pioneering mobility concepts. The result? BMW’s Mega City Vehicle, an all electric four passenger car made primarily from carbon fiber reinforced plastic.
The need for lightweight carbon fiber in the construction of this new vehicle led BMW to seek out SGL and shortly thereafter the joint venture SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers was born and the chosen site for its new facility was announced as being right here in Grant County. They explain that the initial investment will be $100 million and will create 200 construction jobs and 80 permanent manufacturing jobs. The facility will run two carbon lines each with an annual capacity of 1,500 metric tons. The time frame for all of this to take place? A year.
If it was anyone else, you would say a year was too short to accomplish so much. Most large projects take longer than a year just to get to the groundbreaking stage. But having been so involved in this project, you know that for this team a year is doable. They have the support of the state, the county, the city, and every agency in-between. You know they have this support because you facilitated the meetings that brought all these groups together.
So here you are, sitting under a tent with close to a hundred other people in the middle of a field celebrating all the hard work that has gotten the project to this point. However, this celebration only marks the halfway point. Construction will start soon and in less than year this very site you’re sitting on will look vastly different. A brand new facility with brand new technology will take the place of the sagebrush and weeds you see now.
Dirt is turned for the new SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers facility in Grant County
The group moves outside of the tent to where the shovels are set up for the first batches of dirt to be turned. You notice the handles of the shovels are made from carbon fiber, nice touch. Everyone claps as the shovels enter the dirt and the media cameras click and flash like crazy.
Here you are, right in the middle of a two-year project. It took a year to get here, and it will take another year to get to the final product. Like all big economic development projects the devil is in the details and in the back of your mind you can’t help but go over all the details still remaining. You think of workforce training that needs to be coordinated, permit and construction deadlines that need to be met, high tech machinery that needs to be installed, and so on and so on.
You catch yourself thinking about these things and force yourself to stop. All that can wait until after the ceremony. Now is the chance to take a breath, much like reaching a vantage point on a hiking trip in the mountains. From this viewpoint you can see the path that brought you here and the path yet to travel. But for now, for this moment, for this day, it’s about being here and enjoying what has been accomplished. A big smile spreads across your face and you join in the applause.
