KIHOMAC wasn't shopping for a site in Oklahoma City. It wanted one site in particular: the land around the building it already runs across the street from a gate at Tinker Air Force Base.
Picking the location was easy. Getting the dirt has taken about two years.
In September, the aerospace and defense contractor announced it will invest $25 million in a new Oklahoma City facility of about 130,000 square feet.
KIHOMAC expects the expansion to create well over 100 new jobs, the company told Location Decision, and is targeting a 2027 construction start with the facility opening in 2028.
KIHOMAC's facility in Warner Robins, Ga., which the company says is similar to what it plans to build in Oklahoma City. Photo courtesy of KIHOMAC.
No other state or city was in the running for this facility.
Three depots, three KIHOMAC sites
KIHOMAC builds wire harnesses, metal and composite parts and electronics assemblies, and it supplies engineers and cleared contract staff to the Air Force, Navy and Space Force. A lot of that work keeps old airplanes in the air. The company makes parts for the B-52, A-10 and F-16, some of which haven't been produced since the 1970s or 1980s.
That business explains the company's map. The Air Force does its heaviest aircraft maintenance at three air logistics complexes, at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Robins Air Force Base in Georgia and Tinker. KIHOMAC has a location outside each one.
"We like to be aligned with our customers," said Adam Grimm, KIHOMAC's president and chief operating officer.
At Tinker, he means that almost to the foot. The base is closing a road and moving its fence line out, Grimm said, which will put KIHOMAC's property at the corner of the new boundary. Air Force engineers and program managers will be able to walk over and pick up the parts being built for their aircraft.
"Doing digital things is great, but it's just not the same as being able to walk across the street and put your hands on a part," Grimm said.
For a company rebuilding parts for jets designed half a century ago, that short walk has practical value. The original drawings, the old tooling and the parts actually flying often disagree, Grimm said. KIHOMAC will 3D-print a test part, take it out to the airplane and find out whether it fits before anyone commits to production.
The hard part was the dirt
The state and KIHOMAC had been talking about growth in Oklahoma City for about two years, Pearson said, and the land was always the sticking point. Part of the ground around the existing building was privately owned. Another piece had a creek running through it.
The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and the Oklahoma Industries Authority, which buys property for economic development on the city's behalf, took on the job of assembling the parcels. Grimm said those local partners "have actually driven the train" on the acquisition, which is still being completed.
"It's problem solving to get it done, more or less," said Leshia Pearson, who directs the Oklahoma Department of Commerce's Aerospace Commerce Economic Services team, known as ACES, and who unveiled the project with KIHOMAC at the Air & Space Forces Association conference in National Harbor, Md.
Incentives, the part of a deal that usually gets the headlines, haven't been settled. Both Grimm and Pearson said the state hasn't yet run an incentive analysis on the project. "They're going to do this one way or the other," Pearson said.
That flips the usual order of a site search. Normally a company narrows a list of places and lets them compete. Here the company named its spot on the first day, and the economic development work was making that spot available.
Growing alongside Tinker
The timing helps. Tinker is taking on maintenance for the KC-46 tanker and the B-21 bomber, bringing a new generation of aircraft into a depot built around older fleets. Pearson said Tinker is the largest military maintenance, repair and overhaul operation in the world. For a contractor that lives on those missions, more work at the base is another reason to stay close.
The region has been organizing around that. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber recently pulled the local chambers and groups that support Tinker into a task force, so the base has one place to call when it needs land, power or other help. Pearson calls Oklahoma a "one phone call state."
Grimm adds the city itself to the list. In some of KIHOMAC's markets, Utah among them, workers are hard to find, he said, and Oklahoma City's cost of living and quality of life make hiring easier. He isn't worried about losing people to the base, either. The people who want government careers and the people who want private industry overlap less than outsiders assume, he said. And when Tinker does hire someone away from KIHOMAC, "now I just have new customers."
The next base
Oklahoma is one of several moves. In September, Utah approved a tax-increment incentive tied to KIHOMAC's plans to add 177 jobs and invest $36 million in Davis County. Grimm said a second Georgia building is possible, and further out he named Ohio, home of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, as the likeliest next market. Each one follows the same logic of putting the plant where the airplanes come in for work.
For communities hoping to land a company like KIHOMAC, Grimm said, being near a base is only the start. Defense manufacturers need an ecosystem around them. KIHOMAC sends out work it doesn't do in house, such as metal coatings, and it would rather use suppliers close enough to visit. Quick permits and local governments willing to work through problems count for a lot, too.
"We bring high-paying jobs. We bring good work. We bring steady work," Grimm said. "So we want to have a community that wants to partner with us."
In Oklahoma City, nobody had to sell KIHOMAC on where to go. The job was getting it the land across the street.