"I just learned that the Mayor of Downey is asking residents to send letters to TESLA in support of the electric vehicle company choosing their city over the City of Long Beach, " says [Fifth District Councilwoman] Schipske who has been a vocal proponent of Long Beach doing more to encourage the electric vehicle manufacturer to the city. "We can do better than Downey and we need to let TESLA Motors know why they should come here."
Yours truly has been a resident of both cities. I don’t want to appear biased, but Downey is a cramped town that’s now covered nothing but McMansions and is about as exciting as a WNBA tournament. Again, I am being objective here–it’s messy, polluted, and has been compared to such places as Damascus and New Dehli.
Long Beach, however, has a coastal breeze, plenty of life, and existing facilities to support new industry. I’m being strictly objective, I repeat. Let me put it in automotive terms: Downey is like a Bug with a carburetted Dodge V-8 and Long Beach is like, well, a Tesla.
You see, while Tesla may be good at producing electric cars that look good and go further on a charge than even those on the drawing boards of Detroit automakers, the firm is also very good at something else--dipping into the public coffers in the form of grants, loans, incentives and direct subsidies borne by the American taxpayer.
So far, and much to their credit, Long Beach city officials have said that there are no city incentives or breaks to give to Tesla. However, as Tesla's history shows, the firm is good at playing the "public trough" game.
Based on that radio interview with Elon, it sounds like Tesla using Downey as a negotiating tactic to game Long Beach into giving up a better deal. Should see if it pans out soon.
Long Beach and Downey have emerged as leading candidates for the Tesla Model S, a four-door electric sedan that would be family oriented.
But the Bay Area is still be in the running for the factory.
"We are in parallel negotiations on multiple sites in California for the sedan plant site," Konrad said. "It would be fair to characterize the sites as both northern and Southern California." Santa Clara County and San Mateo County are not under consideration for the sedan plant, Konrad added.
The old gift basket ploy, and Elon isn't even in town.
Quote:
HAWTHORNE - All five members of the Downey City Council took a bus to Hawthorne on Tuesday in their quest to persuade Tesla Motors to build an electric-car plant where NASA once assembled space capsules.
...
If there were 5 of them, it probably would have made more sense to drive.
Today's news that Councilmember Gerrie Schipske recently created and posted a YouTube video touting Long Beach's tax credits for new businesses is making a lot of noise throughout the city, amid rumors that Tesla has been leaning towards choosing Downey after the city took out a full-page ad in the LA Times and made other efforts to court the automaker. Schipske's video is framed as a love letter and ends with: "Tesla, if you want tax credits... Long Beach is your site..."
LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The competition between Long Beach and Downey to attract a Tesla Motors electric car assembly plant has a touch of irony.
While Long Beach city officials have expressed an interest in bringing Tesla to Long Beach, for more than a year they have also been courting a startup movie studio to occupy the former Boeing 717 production site north of Long Beach Airport.
Downey officials, on the other hand, are more than willing to see their Downey Studios movie facilities replaced with a Tesla plant.
"From my city's standpoint it hasn't been what we thought it could be, or should be," Downey Mayor Mario Guerra said, adding that he supports a proposal to turn the site into an electric-car plant. "We're very happy about the possibility of getting Tesla. We think that's the best use for the property."
Guerra said Downey Studios has created few jobs and had a limited boost to the local economy.
Which raises a couple of questions: Just how much of an economic boon would the proposed Long Beach Studios facility be for the city? How many of the 2,500 to 3,000 jobs that movie studio executives say would be created by Long Beach Studios would actually go to local residents?
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Still, movie production is a less-certain industry than automobile manufacturing, and it might be a safer bet for Long Beach to have Tesla at the Boeing site rather than Long Beach Studios, Kyser said.
"Tesla would create more jobs for the regular folks, so you'd have to say on that basis you'd probably be better to have Tesla, but the idea is you want to get that facility used," he said.
Both projects would perhaps be a gamble - a relatively new auto company trying to capitalize on new technologies, and an untested movie studio in the shadow of Hollywood.
Young disagreed with Kyser, saying that the movie studio has much more long-term potential.
"Unless production goes through the roof (at Tesla), I don't think it has the ability to expand that a movie studio does," he said.
My biggest concern at this point is that neither a movie studio nor Tesla Motors will locate in Long Beach.
The Mayor of Downey called me and told me the very same story of why Downey would prefer Tesla Motors over the movie studios that are there. Bottom line: Tesla can create jobs in a very short period of time. He's pretty confident that Downey will get Tesla. Afterall, he and his City Council assembled a "red team" and aggressively marketed Tesla Motors. (Sadly, I couldn't get the City Council, Mayor nor the Chamber of Commerce to assemble a "red team" on this one.)
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