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Saturday, February 9, 2008 Companies: Airport a
necessity for business
Bruce Los, right, director of
human resources for Gentex, speaks with Dick Haworth, chairman of Haworth
furniture company, Friday at Tulip City Airport. Gentex Corp. used Tulip City Airport and its company plane to
shuttle customers between Detroit and Holland almost 20 times in a single day
during last month's international auto show. Examples
like this will be used more often in the coming months to convey to the public
how important the Holland airport is for employers and the economy. Voters
in Holland and Zeeland cities and Park and Holland townships will vote May 6
whether or not to support a regional management plan and a 0.10 mill tax hike
that would create about $380,000 annually to more efficiently help operate the
airport. The
increase would mean about an extra $10 paid each year for someone who owns a
home with a market value of about $200,000. Business
leaders and airport millage supporters met Friday at the airport to talk about
the proposal. Bruce
Los, director of human resources for Gentex, the Zeeland-based auto supplier,
said the company took the opportunity to fly Asian and European customers here
while they were in Detroit for the annual auto show. "We're
not going to take our newest and most top-secret things to the show for
everyone to see, so we go get our customers and bring them back here," Los
said. Executives
at Gentex and other large employers in the Holland area say these types of
visits would not occur if the companies were forced to use airports in Grand
Rapids, Chicago or Muskegon. "Typically,
we'll get 15 people onto the plane and fly them to our customers," said
Dick Haworth, chairman of Haworth furniture company. "When we drop them
off, we're loading that plane again with their people and bringing them back
here for a part of the day before making the trip again." Jim
Storey, who retired from the airport authority board to coordinate the millage
campaign, said it is estimated that 20,000 people in the Holland area have jobs
with companies that rely on an increasingly efficient airport to remain
competitive in global sales. Mark
Schurman, a Herman Miller spokesman, said his and other companies use their
planes and the airport to finalize large sale orders as well as to visit
schools where they recruit well-trained engineers, designers and other
professionals. "We
know it's only $10," Schurman said. "But regardless of the amount,
we're asking people to take a tax increase. We want to convey to them how
important this is to us and our economy in this situation." |
