Fly DC Jets
by Heidi Smith
Title
Fly DC Jets
Artist
Heidi Smith
Medium
Photograph
Description
Fly DC Jets - Original photographic artwork by Heidi Smith
The new owner of a commercial aircraft-production building that last housed Boeing�s 717 assembly line has agreed to retain the structure�s iconic sign that has been a familiar sight near the Long Beach Airport with the phrase �Fly DC Jets� for 56 years. The developer�s agreements with the City and Boeing, however, aren�t enough for local preservationists, who are pushing for the marker to be designated as an historic landmark.
Most visible at night, the red and blue neon sign that includes the legendary McDonnell Douglas Corporation logo has been a symbol of the bygone years of commercial-aircraft manufacturing in Long Beach, according to historians, since the 1950s. Six years ago, the sign became even more significant when Boeing shuttered its 717-assembly plant, closing the last airline passenger-jet factory in California.
Boeing had taken over the property from McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1997 after buying out the company and has been trying to sell the site ever since closing the plant�s doors in 2006. Proposals have come and gone, including plans for a movie studio and a Tesla-automobile factory. City officials even tried to entice Boeing to move its 737-MAX production to the building to bring back airline production. But no such luck.
Last year, however, Sares Regis Group, an Irvine-based developer, stepped up to the plate to purchase a majority of Boeing�s vacant land. The developer�s most recent purchase, which closed in October, includes buying 160 acres made up of two 80-acre parcels that consist of two former aircraft-production hangars and Parking Lot D, which once provided offsite parking for the airport.
The aircraft production hangars were built at the outset of World War II by Douglas Aircraft Company, whose workers turned out some 15,000 airplanes. Roger Schaufele, a retired Douglas employee who once worked at the site from the early 1960s to the late 1980s as vice president of engineering, said the Long Beach operation at one point employed about 70,000 people. He said the local workforce first built C-47s, B-17s, A-26s and early A-20s when the plant, once owned by the government, was called the �Arsenal of Defense.�
After the war, the aerospace industry shifted to producing commercial aircraft, he said, adding that the Douglas Company built a series of DC transports. After the company merged to become McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1967, the line started building MD-80s and later built 717s, a single-aisle version of the DC-9 series 30, once Boeing took over 30 years later. The line built a total of 737 Boeing 717s until the last one rolled off the lot in 2006.
Today, however, all that�s left is the sign that remains the only remnant of commercial-airplane production in the state, Schaufele said. The aerospace workforce in Long Beach has dwindled down to just a few thousand employees who work at Boeing�s C-17-manufacturing plant, which is the last remaining large-scale aircraft-production line in California. �All the production of complete airplanes has kind of gone away,� he said. �[The sign] does have historical significance � that�s for sure.�
Sares Regis said in a prepared statement that it now plans to develop the 717-hangar property with the potential for about 3.2 million square feet of �office, industrial and retail space.� The recent purchase also completes all land sales at Douglas Park, a 261-acre master-planned property located across Lakewood Boulevard where Sares Regis is developing north and south portions of a 33.6-acre industrial complex known as Pacific Pointe, where seven industrial buildings are to be sold to potential users for corporate-headquarters.
Debby Arkell, spokesperson for Boeing�s Real Property Management Division, said a purchase-and-sale agreement includes a condition that the new owner must come up with a plan to keep the iconic sign displayed if the development calls for the hangars to be demolished. �Should [the new owner] decide to tear those buildings down, [the new owner is] required to work with the city of Long Beach and essentially with Boeing to establish a plan as to what would happen to the sign,� she said. �There will be good care taken of [the sign] if that�s what the buyer chooses to do.�
Source - http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/?p=17261
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January 12th, 2014
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