Construction under way on airplane manufacaturing facility

Renaissance builds a two-seater recreational plane

Business Today

After more than a year of laboring in bureaucracy and litigation, Renaissance Aircraft broke ground Jan. 25 at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport on a new 52,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.

The building will house up to 150 employees within a year of its completion and will include 4,000 square feet for office space.

John Dearden, Renaissance president, hopes to occupy the building in July, though the interior may not be finished at that point. Even so, Dearden is anxious to get out of the four airport buildings his company is using now.

The company builds the Luscombe 8F, a two-seater recreational plane certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. The design of the plane dates to the 1930s, although Renaissance has updated it.

"Getting everything under one roof will make production more cost effective and will allow us to set-up and refine our production activities," he said.

Dearden had hoped to have the building completed by the late summer or early fall of 2001. But a lawsuit filed by the Don Luscombe Aviation History Foundation concerning the ownership of $8 million in manufacturing equipment delayed construction.

Dearden also partially has blamed the city government for the delay. He said officials were late to send out proposal requests for the construction. But the city and state were both delayed, at least in part, because of the lawsuit, airport manager Bruce Loy said.

Some of the start-up financing is coming through the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Renaissance filed a countersuit against the foundation for money lost during the delays. The company won both suits.

Renaissance began building its airplanes in two hangars at the airport and two buildings on the east side of Interstate 55.

"We're excited to finally get to the point where we're going to be ready for construction," said Loy, who helped lure Renaissance to Cape Girardeau. "We've been working on this over a year."

In January 2001, the city promised Renaissance it would build the $1.6 million facility upon the sale of some public facility bonds.

Dearden hopes to build 250 to 500 planes a year once the business gets going. So far, the company has three planes near completion. They will be finished in mid-February, Dearden said.