Space Florida: Project Beep mystery aerospace company wants to hire 1,000 on Merritt Island
An undisclosed aerospace company wants to invest $247 million establishing a major development near NASA's Kennedy Space Center, creating about 1,000 jobs "at industry average wages," a Space Florida memo shows.
This mystery company is identified as the secretive Project Beep in Space Florida agenda materials, and only scant details have been publicly released.
Project Beep would establish aerospace manufacturing, research and development, warehousing and administrative facilities on 25 acres at the multi-tenant Exploration Park on northern Merritt Island.
Managed in partnership between NASA and Space Florida, Exploration Park is the home of Blue Origin's sprawling New Glenn rocket manufacturing complex. The newly expanded Airbus U.S. Space & Defense satellite factory is also here, along with the 104,000-square-foot Space Life Sciences Lab.
NASA: Florida Sen. Moody: Move NASA's headquarters from Washington, D.C., to the Space Coast
Project Beep would involve a 30-year land lease with Space Florida. The authority's board of directors will discuss the large-scale economic development proposal during a 1 p.m. teleconference on May 28.
In scale of magnitude, Brevard County's fast-growing aerospace-aviation sector nearly doubled in employment from 2017 (7,847 workers) to 2023 (14,828 workers), Economic Development Commission of Florida' Space Coast records show. Project Beep stands to add about 1,000 employees to that sum.
Space Florida board members will vote on whether to complete Project Beep negotiations and enter the Exploration Park property lease.
"Project intends to organically fund construction and will be responsible for all repairs, and operations and maintenance expenses. Note all improvements made to the premises will become the property of Space Florida and leased back to the Company under the sublease," the memo said.
Also on the Space Florida agenda: Project Opal, a potential $1 billion aerospace complex slated for construction near Crestview in Okaloosa County in Florida's Panhandle, the Northwest Florida Daily News reported.
Project Opal is slated to evolve into a 1-million-square-foot advanced manufacturing complex during three building phases in the 2035-2036 timeframe on 135 acres at the Shoal River Ranch Gigasite, according to an Okaloosa Board of County Commissioners application score sheet. The undisclosed company will ramp up hiring starting later this year, reaching 336 workers at average wages of $69,434.
"The company is a long-standing leader in the support, development and production of aerospace systems and has been at the forefront of the aviation industry for decades," the score sheet said.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space. Another easy way: Click here to sign up for our weekly Space newsletter.
Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Mystery aerospace firm Project Beep wants to hire 1,000 on Space Coast
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