Seattle — Boeing Co. stunned its hometown Wednesday by announcing it would move its headquarters out of Seattle, where the aircraft manufacturing giant was founded 85 years ago.
And the company promoted the leaders of its three largest operating units including Lawrence native and Kansas University graduate Alan Mulally, head of the commercial airplanes group to chief executive officers, with the goal of giving the divisions more autonomy and encouragement to grow.
Boeing Chief Executive Officer Phil Condit announces Boeing's plans to move its world headquarters from Seattle, its home since the company's founding 85 years ago. Condit delivered the news Wednesday in Seattle.
Chairman and Chief Executive Phil Condit said Boeing was considering Chicago, Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth for its new headquarters. The new site should be chosen by early summer and running by fall.
Condit said the move would save money and give the world's No. 1 maker of passenger jets a headquarters central to its operations, now spread among 26 states, including Kansas.
The company's huge jet manufacturing plants will remain in the Seattle area, as will much of its research and development work.
Fewer than half of the 1,000 employees working at the Seattle corporate center would be moved to the new headquarters, Condit said. The others will be transferred to other departments or may be laid off.
Boeing is Washington state's biggest private employer, with 78,400 people in the Seattle area alone. Worldwide, it has 198,900 workers, with major operations in Southern California and St. Louis; it also has a plant in Wichita, Kan.
Timber scion William Boeing founded the company in 1916 in Seattle, where it initially built wooden seaplanes.
The company defined Seattle and its culture for much of the 20th century. Its plants built the bombers that helped win World War II; its designers invented the jetliners that revolutionized global travel; its international prestige gave the city its claim as a hub of the Pacific economy.
But its operations became more far-flung in the 1990s as Boeing absorbed longtime rival McDonnell Douglas and the space divisions of North American Rockwell.
Condit said the decision to move was made six months ago and was announced as the company actively began seeking a new site.
The headquarters needs "to be in a location central to our operating units, customers and the financial community but separate from our existing operations," Condit said.
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