Startup firm PowAir International receives tax abatements for $95 million 500-job plant at Brookley Aeroplex

By Ellen Mitchell | emitchell@al.com on March 20, 2013 at 1:10 PM, updated March 20, 2013 at 3:36 PM

MOBILE, Alabama -- The Industrial Development Board for the City of Mobile has approved local tax abatements for a $95 million project at Brookley Aeroplex that would create 500 direct jobs within the next few years. PowAir International Inc., a start-up maker of wind turbines and related items such as blades and towers, is hoping to lease land from the Mobile Airport Authority to build a new headquarters and manufacturing facility. In June 2011, the company signed an option to lease 35 acres at Brookley from the authority, but it is unclear how much land the company will lease now. The location of the new company would be the site of warehouses that the authority demolished several years ago, on the east side of Broad Street across from the Fort Whiting Armory and just north of the U.S. Coast Guard station. The project will create 500 jobs in Mobile County within three years and workers should earn about $60,000 a year, benefits included, said Michael Dow, executive vice president of PowAir.

PowAir will be the second big investment in wind energy along the Gulf Coast. General Electric Co. opened a Pensacola plant that assembles wind turbines in 2001. The IDB approved about $9.265 million in non-educational property tax abatements over the next 10 years for PowAir International. According to the IDB, the company will start construction within one year of being granted tax abatements.

PowAir International has received tax abatements for a $95 million project at

Mobile's Brookley Aeroplex that would build and repair gear drives and other

components for wind turbines, ships and offshore oil and gas platforms.

(Press-Register file photo)