Leaders of Grand Sky joined executives from Northrop Grumman and state and local officials last Thursday (Oct. 14, 2015), to commemorate the groundbreaking for Northop Grumman’s 36,000-square-foot facility at Grand Sky. Northrop Grumman, a global security company and maker of the Global Hawk, an unmanned aircraft used at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, is investing $10 million in the Grand Sky facility, which will be used primarily for UAS research and training.
“Northrop Grumman’s groundbreaking represents yet another milestone for Grand Sky,” says Thomas Swoyer Jr., president of Grand Sky Development Company. “Northrop Grumman was the first company to step forward and sign a lease agreement, and is the first to begin building a facility here. Having a company like Northrop Grumman as an anchor tenant at Grand Sky is a win-win – they will benefit from the unmatched amenities and UAS-specific offerings here, and their presence will help us attract additional tenants to Grand Sky.”
Northrop Grumman expects to complete construction of the facility in 2016. The company is exploring additional construction phases over the next few years.
Grand Sky is about 15 miles west of Grand Forks and is located on the Grand Forks Air Force Base on land acquired through an enhanced use lease agreement, which allows the Air Force to lease land to Grand Forks County, which in turn leases the land to Grand Sky Development Company for a period of 50 years. The company celebrated its own groundbreaking on Sept. 10, 2015, and anticipates infrastructure construction, including reconnection of the taxiway to the Grand Forks Air Force Base runway, to be complete in 2016. By 2025, Grand Sky expects the park’s 1.2 million square feet of available space to be fully leased, contributing a total of about 3,000 full-time equivalent jobs to the local economy.
