History
Boeing opened its first facilities in Everett on October 13, 1943, at a former auto garage to produce sections for the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. The company had several small shops in the city, but their presence in the area was reduced by 1963.[38] The first 25 orders for the Boeing 747, to be the world's largest jetliner, were sold to Pan American World Airways for $525 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) in March 1966. The program would require a larger factory than their Renton facility, which was instead planned to be used for the conceptual 2707 supersonic airliner.[39] Among the sites considered by Boeing for a new factory were Monroe, Washington; McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, Washington;[40] Moses Lake, Washington; Cleveland, Ohio; and Walnut Creek, California.[38][41]
On June 17, 1966, the company announced that it had selected a site adjacent to Paine Field as the future home of its Boeing 747 assembly plant.[42] Boeing purchased 780 acre north of the airport, which had primarily been used by the U.S. military and small businesses;[38][43] a 75-year lease for use of Paine Field was also signed with the county government, which owned the airport.[44] The company had already spent several months acquiring properties around the airport in preparation of the announcement and cleared parts of the site by late May.[41][45]
The 158 e6cuft factory, planned to become the world's largest building by volume, was built in sections beginning in late June.[46][47] The first section housed a mockup of the Boeing 747 that had been under assembly at the Renton factory.[48] A railroad spur connecting the site to the mainline tracks at Mukilteo was constructed through Japanese Gulch.[49] The first 113 workers at the Everett factory began work on January 3, 1967, and prepared for the assembly of the relocated Renton mockup.[50] The factory was officially opened on May 1, 1967, four months after the first workers had arrived to start construction of the 747.[38] Construction of the factory involved 4.5 e6cuyd of soil to be excavated.[51]
The main factory building was originally 43 acre and later expanded by 45 percent in 1979 as part of the Boeing 767 program and another 50 percent in 1990 for the Boeing 777.[52][53] The company acquired 68 acre of Paine Field property from the county government in 1989 to expand its flight line.[54]
To accommodate the Dreamlifter, a converted 747-400 which delivered 787 sections to the plant, a base was constructed on the western edge of Paine Field's runway. Opening in October 2013, the 17 acre base, called the Dreamlifter Operations Center, was funded by Snohomish County with $35 million in bonds; it is owned by the county via the airport, with Boeing originally leasing the site and servicing the bonds.[55] Following Boeing's decision to shutter the 787 production line in Everett and consolidate 787 production in South Carolina, the lease on the Dreamlifter Operations Center was transferred to FedEx for use as a cargo base.[56]
Several workers at the Everett facility tested positive for COVID-19 in early March 2020, prior to a full shutdown of operations.[57] The factory was shut down for three weeks until workers were able to return with mandatory face masks, social distancing, and staggered start times to reduce potential exposure.[58]
As of 2025, the Everett facility has 30 Boeing 777X airframes in storage on unused runways—some for as long as six years. The factory had also moved workers away from the 777X program to complete fuselage repairs on the Boeing 787 that were completed in February 2025. Additional work to repair 737 MAX fuselages is expected to continue in what is described as Everett's "shadow factory".[59]
