The company's planned 8-million-sq-ft manufacturing and final-assembly campus at Piedmont Triad International Airport would rank among the largest advanced-manufacturing projects underway in the U.S.

The effort is comparable in scale to Ford's nearly 10-million-sq-ft BlueOval City EV manufacturing campus in Tennessee, and its groundbreaking marks the culmination of more than a decade of planning by airport officials to create a shovel-ready aerospace manufacturing site.

"We started planning this back in 2011 to have this site ready to support a customer like this," says Kevin Baker, executive director of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority, which is overseeing site preparation and infrastructure work for the project.

That preparation included assembling land, extending infrastructure and preserving room for future airport expansion. Much of the site's water, sewer and roadway infrastructure was already in place before JetZero selected Greensboro, though utility capacity will still need to be expanded to support the campus.

"It's actually why we won, because we were ready," Baker says. "You've got water and sewer. They're going to be expanded. They need to be a little larger for these guys. Electrical service is going to be expanded. But the roadways are already there."

Mass grading is expected to begin by August or September and continue for about a year before major vertical construction begins. "We have a lot of earthwork to move," Baker says. "This could be upwards of 7 or 8 million cubic yards of earth to move."

Jacobs, which is performing the engineering for the grading effort, says the broader airport development effort encompasses nearly 1,000 acres of airport-owned property being prepared for aerospace and industrial development.

"These infrastructure investments are creating a site-ready campus capable of accommodating major aerospace and advanced manufacturing operations," Pete Butler, Jacobs vice president and director of East aviation, told ENR in an email.

Baker says the effort is unfolding through three separate construction stages. The first involves renovation of an existing PTAA-owned office for JetZero's headquarters, hiring, training and engineering; developing the North Carolina Composite Center (NC3), an R&D and manufacturing site expected to begin construction within roughly six months; and the main aircraft manufacturing campus.

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Infrastructure Investment Takes Shape

North Carolina officials said the state anticipates providing up to $450 million for site preparation, road construction, water and wastewater improvements and other support tied to the manufacturing and research-and-development complex.

About $225 million of that amount is expected to fund earthwork and environmental mitigation, with additional funding supporting roadway improvements, utility expansions and construction of the NC3 facility, Baker says.

PTAA's responsibility is to deliver a construction-ready site. The authority will complete grading, utility work and site preparation to the edge of JetZero's leasehold, after which the company will construct roads, parking areas, utility connections and buildings within the campus.

Those infrastructure commitments come in addition to a Transformative-class Job Development Investment Grant that could reimburse the company up to approximately $1 billion over a 37-year period if performance targets are met.

Beyond the financial investment JetZero plans in the state, officials said the number of high-paying jobs the effort will produce makes it the largest economic-development project in North Carolina history based on job commitments.

"Today, a great new chapter in North Carolina's storied history of flight is taking off," Gov. Josh Stein said at the groundbreaking ceremony. "These 14,500 jobs and $4.7 billion in investment will transform the triad region for generations."

JetZero selected Greensboro for its first advanced manufacturing and final-assembly facility in 2025 after a nationwide search, citing North Carolina's aerospace workforce, research institutions and transportation infrastructure. 

The company said it plans to begin aircraft production in the early 2030s and eventually reach a manufacturing rate of up to 20 aircraft per month by the late 2030s.

Baker says the project is likely to spur additional aerospace development around the airport as the OEM’s suppliers seek proximity to the aircraft manufacturer. The airport already hosts operations from HondaJet, Boom Supersonic and Marshall Aerospace.

"This is the kind of transformational project that only comes around once in a generation," Baker says.

Baker confirmed JetZero has selected its architect, engineer and construction team but that contracts are still being finalized. ENR requested additional information from JetZero regarding the project's design and construction partners but did not immediately receive a response.