The city of Superior has landed hundreds of new aviation jobs. Mayor Bruce Hagen says the city and Douglas County worked closely with the state on a package of incentives to attract Kestrel Aircraft Company. “We were able to land this company – no pun intended – in a matter of six months,” Hagen says.
Incentives include more than $3 million in tax incremental financing, $2.4 million in low-interest loans from the city and $500,000 dollars in loans from Douglas County, which also transferred title to land for the Kestrel plant. In addition, the state has provided incentives which include $90 million in New Market Tax Credits. The payoff for Superior should be huge: the builder of advanced general aviation planes is expected to bring 600 jobs by 2016, many of them highly skilled.
It’s the largest number of new jobs created in Superior since World War II, and the largest number brought to Wisconsin since Governor Scott Walker took office with a promise to create 200-thousand new jobs. “There will be other opportunities for businesses to grow here,” says Hagen. “It will ripple though the community very nicely.”