Kansas City Overhaul Base

The plant at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s employed more than 6,000 people who worked on repairing the entire fleet of Trans World Airlines (and other airlines under contract) and it was Kansas City's biggest employer.

Since TWA's successor American Airlines began downsizing in preparation for a total abandonment effective September 2010, three companies moved their headquarters and plants into the complex (Smith Electric Vehicles (US), Jet Midwest and Nordic Windpower).

The plant along with the airport opened in 1957 at a cost of $25 million and was marked an attempt to keep TWA in Kansas City following the Great Flood of 1951 which had destroyed TWA's facilities at Fairfax Airport close to the Missouri River.

[1] The airline also moved its large overhaul operations at the New Castle County Airport in Delaware to Kansas City.

In 2009, Kansas City broke ground on the KCI Intermodal Center, Kansas City SmartPort foreign trade zone on 800 acres (320 ha) across Runway 9/27 directly south of the plant being developed by Trammell Crow Company.