This store had a good number of historic local photos lining some of the walls. I didn't take as many pictures as I maybe should have of them (honestly, I didn't think most of them were all that interesting), but this one -- showing the Boeing 727 plant in Renton -- certainly was! 1971 is an interesting year to choose, being about the low point of the "Boeing Bust" of the late 60s/early 70s, when Boeing dramatically shrunk its Seattle operations; Boeing never really recovered from that and now, 50 years later, it feels like we're on the edge of another Boeing Bust with the company shifting production to areas with cheaper labor and selling its offices and moving staff to permanently work from home. Luckily, this area has a much more diverse economy these days, and Boeing's not such a major employer any longer.
Interestingly, this store (and the rest of the Renton Landing development) was built on land that Boeing sold off after outsourcing much of their component production, but I'm pretty sure there was never a final assembly line on this part of the site.
Yes, I hear that Boeing has been moving a lot of their production to South Carolina and places like that. I hear that this has not gone completely smoothly. Perhaps they should have left well enough alone, but we know how that goes. As iconic as the 747 was for Boeing in the 1970s, it was in some ways the wrong plane for the time given the high price of oil and the fact that a lot of those 747s were flying around with low passenger loads. Oh well, it is/was an iconic aircraft though and at least it made more sense than the SST that never happened (probably to Boeing's benefit).
ReplyDeleteAs someone in the NW, you might recall another famous incident involving a Boeing 727 in the Northwest in the year 1971. Yep, that was the year DB Cooper parachuted out of a Northwest Airlines 727 somewhere between Portland and Seattle. That's always been one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in the US and I suspect it probably gets even more attention in the NW than it does elsewhere in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper
Ha, I certainly knew about DB Cooper, but didn't connect the dots that it was also in 1971! That's a funny coincidence 🙂
DeleteYeah, after Boeing moved their headquarters to Chicago a while back, it's clear that they aren't a Seattle company anymore. The biggest recent loss has been the end of 787 production in Everett in favor of making them in South Carolina, despite that plant having some serious quality control issues over the years. (Of course, Boeing as a whole seems to have quality control problems, but still...)
Modern day Boeing seems a lot like McDonnell-Douglas in the last couple of decades they were around before Boeing bought them. MDD had some fine airplanes, but they were often riddled with little problems that caused airlines to hate them and there were also some problems that led to crashes that caused the public to distrust them. I don't think MDD ever had manufacturing problems like Boeing has in South Carolina since most of their planes were assembled in Southern California near their homebase.
DeleteBut, yeah, while MDD was floundering around, Boeing had the reputation of being the solid plane company. Now, well, their reputation has really changed. I'm sure some people in Seattle who were burned by Boeing's business decisions are probably laughing at them now.
This is way off topic, but did you hear about the Yeliseyevsky Food Emporium closing in Moscow after 120 years in business? This must be just about the fanciest grocery store decor around! It's a shame the store is finally closing, but here are some photos of it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56683249
Agreed, it definitely seems like Boeing inherited quite a bit of the MD culture in the merger, and it's not going well for them. Not sure about laughing at their problems, but Boeing has certainly lost any loyalty and goodwill that they once had in Seattle or Washington as a whole!
DeleteWow, that is a neat store! It's too bad none of the grocery stores I visited in Italy were ever that fancy...