A St. Louis firm will manufacture business jets in Ames, Iowa, rather than in Cape Girardeau because local investors there will contribute $2.4 million over the next three months to the project, company officials said Thursday.

VisionAire Corp. plans to develop a new single-engine, five-passenger business jet that could operate from runways as short as 2,500 feet in length. The Vantage aircraft, priced at $1.5 million, would be designed for regional business travel.

The company hopes to construct the plant and begin manufacturing jet aircraft by June 1997.

The plant will employ 150 people directly. Another 100 manufacturing jobs could be created to support the plant.

Ames Mayor Larry Curtis said the manufacturing facility will have about a $3.5 million payroll.

Gary Pluth, VisionAire's chief financial officer, said Cape Girardeau put forth an equally attractive package.

The decision disappointed Cape Girardeau city, Chamber of Commerce and industrial recruitment officials, who wanted VisionAire to choose a 40-acre site just north of the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

Both VisionAire and Cape Girardeau officials said the decision boiled down to local investment.

"We knew from day one that we had a tough battle to raise the private sector money," said Mitch Robinson, who heads the Cape Girardeau Area Industrial Recruitment Association.

"It was a pure community funding issue as opposed to site," Mayor Al Spradling III said.

Spradling said he felt Cape offered the better site, but that Ames had the local investment. "They wanted to see who would come up with the most money for them to go forward," he said.

Cape Girardeau officials met with about 40 potential investors on June 20. But there were never any firm commitments outside of two a individuals who said they would invest a couple hundred thousand dollars to the venture if the company chose Cape Girardeau, Robinson said.

VisionAire had sought $2.7 million in local investment capital. Cape Girardeau Realtor Tom L. Meyer, who had worked for several years to land the plant, said the investment capital could have been raised.

"I had the funds available for them, but they wanted funds from local investors rather than the source I had," Meyer said.

Meyer wouldn't elaborate on the source. But Robinson said the source was an out-of-town private-sector retirement fund.