IT was no accident that a regional hub for trade and manufacturing grew up around the little shop opened by Bill Boeing in a quiet valley south of Seattle.

The area had the natural resources, the strategic location, the ready workers and the University of Washington. But it took outstanding leadership to build our aerospace industry into a global powerhouse. Gov. Chris Gregoire and industry partners are now spearheading a statewide campaign to manufacture the next generation 737 in Washington, and we should bolster the state's efforts with coordinated leadership here in Boeing's birthplace of King County.

We have a strong foundation on which to build. The factories are here. The work force is here. The ability to move goods is here. King County owns Boeing Field, and nowhere in the region do the air, land and sea transportation facilities tie together as they do in the Duwamish/Boeing Field area.

But locally, at the county and regional level, we can do more:

• We must train the next generation of aviation builders. Our work force is aging. The average age of the local aerospace worker is 48, and many are eligible for retirement in the next few years. With the Gen-X cohort smaller than the boomer generation, and with worldwide demand for aerospace workers increasing, we must connect the training our colleges and universities provide young job-seekers and dislocated workers with the skills the industry needs.

• We must identify land for industrial expansion. A multiyear cleanup of the Duwamish basin — from the uplands to the river — is now under way through a partnership of Boeing, King County, the Port and city of Seattle, and federal agencies. The cleanup of upland contaminated properties will position them for reinvestment and redevelopment to one day become the sites for job-producing airplane-part factories and bustling freight facilities and serve as a clean gateway to the Sound.

More work must be done to inventory other properties in our urban areas that can support aerospace expansion, and we must continue working with companies — both domestic and international — looking for a world-class setting in which to build the planes of the future.

• We must make it easier to do business across all jurisdictions. Our ambitious reforms are taking hold in county government, but we must continue to make government as a whole more efficient so the aerospace industry and its suppliers can spend less time navigating the system and more time creating jobs. We must work together to create easier and streamlined permitting, break down barriers to speedier siting approvals, and develop more predictable and unified tax and regulatory structures while protecting the quality of life that gives our region a competitive edge.

A strong, diverse and sustainable regional economy takes cooperation, vision and the follow-through to make it happen.

We have long benefitted from being the airplane-manufacturing capital of the world. Now we must retain and indeed build upon those benefits. That is why I will soon assemble a group of local leaders — public and private — to launch our regional effort to position King County as the premier location to build the redesigned 737, in our support of the state's aerospace partnership.

Our local effort can also promote the network of local and statewide manufacturers that supply Boeing production, and better coordinate aerospace training. In the past century, no industry has done more to create the prosperity of our region's middle class than the airplane business, and people aren't going to stop needing airplanes any time soon.

If we are to secure our future as the leader in this vital and still-growing sector, if we are to build prosperity and get people back to work, it is critical that we commit to working shoulder-to-shoulder, with focus and urgency, to ensure that the next generation of planes, and many after that, will be built here in King County, near the little red barn at Boeing Field — where it all began.