A charter jet company is expanding at the Detroit Aerotropolis.
Kalitta Charters' $5.8 million investment will pay to move part of its operation from Willow Run to a new facility in Ypsilanti Township and also for an expansion of two of its buildings at
Willow Run Airport. About 80 jobs will be created, most of them in Ypsilanti Township, Wayne County spokesperson Brooke Blackwell says.
Kalitta, which also has an operation in Tennessee, considered moving either there or to California but was enticed to expand in Michigan with incentives offered by Wayne's County's
Economic Development Growth Engine, or EDGE. EDGE cut some of the improvement costs to Kalitta, a company founded in 2002. At that time, Kalitta had 81 employees. Currently it employs 210 people and provides corporate charters, air ambulance, cargo transportation and other air services.
EDGE is part of a plan to create a
Detroit Region Aerotropolis for transportation related businesses to locate near each other in the Aerotropolis boundaries that stretch across Wayne and Washtenaw counties and include Detroit Metro and Willow Run airports.
"We're excited both by Kalitta's decision to stay and by the fact that this investment signifies the future growth in the Aerotropolis," Turkia Awada-Mulllin, EDGE's chief development officer, says in a statement.
Source: Brooke Blackwell, Wayne County spokesperson
Writer: Kim North Shine
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