Tucson: Sargent to Expand in Marana

Sargent will double operations; number of new jobs not known

By Tim Steller

ARIZONA DAILY STAR June 23, 2010

A Marana defense contractor is planning to dou­ble the size of its local operations in the next year, adding high-paid aerospace jobs over the long run.

Sargent Aerospace and Defense announced Tuesday it plans to build a new, 70,000-square­foot building next to its existing, 60,000-square­foot facility along Interstate 10 in Marana.

The new building will allow the company, for­merly known as Sargent Controls, to add work on programs such as the new Boeing 787, the Airbus A350, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Virginia class submarine, the company said in an announcement.

The company did not announce how many jobs it plans to add. That’s because Sargent is still in the process of realigning its operations, and some activ­ities could be moved out of Marana at the same time others are being moved in.

The availability of aerospace and defense workers in the Tucson area was among the reasons Sargent chose to expand here rather than at the other sites it considered — Torrance, Calif.; Miami; Franklin, Ind.; and Montreal.

“Tucson certainly brings that to the table, with skilled labor in those key areas,”said Lisa Short,Sar­gent’s director of strategic planning.

Sargent is part of the multi­faceted Dover Corp., based in Downers Grove, Ill. Sargent em­ploys about 250 people in the Tucson area.

The opportunity to snare an ex­pansion in the Tucson area came to the attention of the local economic development agency, Tucson Re­gional Economic Opportunities, about a year ago, said its president and CEO, Joe Snell. TREO, as the agency is known, and the town of Marana went to work making pro­posals for Sargent to expand near its existing site.

Eventually, factors such as the costs of expanding in the Tucson area and the convenience of the location, along with the available work force, persuaded Sargent to expand here, Short said.

Sargent has a maquiladora in Guaymas, Sonora, and relation­ships with California suppliers, making this a strategic location.

Marana made a proposal to Sargent as part of the wooing process. It plans to make Sargent the first user of an incentive pro­gram. It uses the sales taxes paid as part of the construction process to refund certain types of employers for employee reloca­tion costs, the cost of beautifying the I-10 corridor and providing training to high school and college students who live in Marana.

Marana also plans to help the company accelerate its construc­tion project by dedicating an in­spector to it full time and by set­ting up a “roundtable” develop­ment review process where the contractors get together with Sargent’s contractors to review and adjust plans as needed, said Josh Wright, assistant to Marana’s town manager.

Marana “put together an ag­gressive proposal,” TREO’s Snell said. “It’s going to be important that Marana lives up to the com­mitment it makes.”

Under the terms of the Marana incentive program, recipients must create at least 25 new jobs that pay at least $40,000 per year, as well as put at least $2 million into a construction project.

Although Sargent isn’t speci­fying the number of jobs it ex­pects to create, Wright said it will undoubtedly surpass the 25-job threshold.

“I have no doubt — and Sargent has no doubt — that they’ll be creating a significant number of jobs over the life of this project,” Wright said.

Another component of the successful landing of the project was the commitment to provide job-training assistance if needed, said Jim Mize, the employer out­reach manager for Pima County One Stop. The company may re­ceive Workforce Investment Act funding for training it performs.

In any case, Mize said, the Tuc­son area has the workers Sargent is likely to need. Some local aero­space workers have been laid off during the recession, and while many of the jobs that Sargent plans to create require engineer­ing or other degrees, others re­quire relatively short-term train­ing that could be earned at Pima Community College, Mize said.

In a news release, the company said the new jobs would likely be in aerospace design, manufacturing, test engineering and other fields.

Aerospace and defense is a sec­tor that TREO has targeted for ex­pansion because of its relatively high pay and growth potential.

A TREO report by consultant Elliott D. Pollack & Co. put the average annual wages for four types of aerospace manufacturing jobs at between $58,000 and $67,000.

The decision was especially re­warding because it also was pos­sible that Sargent could have cho­sen to leave Tucson.

“We took a clean slate in look­ing at the opportunities,” said Short, the Sargent planning exec­utive. “That led us to the decision to expand here in Tucson.”

Contact reporter Tim Steller at tsteller@azstarnet.com or 807-8427.