Work to clear 90 acres of land for construction of the future Honda Aero jet engine manufacturing plant in Alamance County is some 20 days ahead of schedule.
ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. -- The clearing of 90 acres of land for the future Honda Aero jet engine manufacturing plant in Alamance County is ahead of schedule.
This means construction crews could begin pouring concrete foundations for the first phase of the Honda complex by the end of the month.
The plant will sit alongside the Burlington-Alamance Regional Airport.
The airport authority's executive director says the lack of rainfall is a big reason for the fast pace of the work.
"We've been able to work 24/7 on moving the dirt," said Dan Danieley. "The contractors have been very, very obliging to be full speed with the project. They had a 60-day window to get the project done, and it looks like they'll have it done, say, in 40 days, give or take."
In addition, construction crews have encountered much less rock than anticipated, and Danieley says a change in design has also helped.
"We were able to work with Honda and their engineers, who actually raised the ground floor, the ground elevation, up four feet from what we had originally planned," said Danieley. "That took us off, or out of, the layer of rock that we would have had to blast."
The one million cubic yards of soil excavated for the Honda Aero plant will provide the fill dirt for an extension of a runway at the Burlington-Alamance Regional Airport.
"We will be extending the runway from its current 5,000 feet to 6,400 feet in this phase, with a followup phase to take the runway to 7,000 feet," said Danieley.
And Danieley says the benefits won't stop there. He says under airport authority ownership, the land would generate no tax revenue, but in Honda's hands, and with it's multi-million dollar capital investment, that will change.
"Sixty-five million dollars will bring approximately $400,000 in tax revenue annually to the city and approximately $400,000 in tax revenue to the county, so, it's a very exciting way of realizing an immediate return to the city and county for their investments," Danieley said.
The Honda-Aero plant will manufacture the HF 120 engine, which will power the HondaJet to be assembled at another new facility at Greensboro's PTI Airport.
Clearing of land for the second phase of the Honda Aero project is scheduled to begin in the spring.