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Posts Tagged ‘long beach’

Another Article About the Importance of the Enterprise Zones to Keep California Competitive

Monday, July 19th, 2010 | Enterprise Zones, Featured Zone, Tax News

 

Craig Johnson’s article in this weekend’s Long Beach Press Telegram highlights the importance of the Enterprise Zone in a recessed economy.  He cites Cal Worthington Ford as the classic example of what can happen without the EZ as a tool to retain California businesses.  Here’s the link to the article.

Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske Critical of Long Beach Losing the Tesla Deal

Monday, December 28th, 2009 | Enterprise Zones

So why did Downey get the new Tesla plant over Long Beach? See below for Gerrie Schipske’s view on the situation. This article was what she posted on her blog:

Gerrie Schipske, councilwoman for Long Beach’s fifth district, has been outspoken in her desire to keep alive the possibility of Tesla Motors locating its plant in Long Beach.

She personally contacted Elon Musk, President of Tesla to ask him what the City of Long Beach was doing to encourage his company to locate there. She also mounted a letter writing campaign called “Long Beach — We Can Do Better Than Downey.”

She used her blog to prod Long Beach officials to actively market the City to get Tesla here. So today upon learning that Tesla has signed a letter of intent with Downey to locate a plant which will manufacture 20,000 electric vehicles and produce 1,000 jobs she issued the following statement:

“The taxpayers of Long Beach deserve a full explanation about who or what killed the deal to bring Tesla to Long Beach. How did we lose this revenue producing opportunity to Downey? Long Beach has so much more to offer to a business than most southern California locations — we have manufacturing space at the Boeing site, nearness to freeways, an airport, a port, railroad, convention center, training programs at our local community college and most importantly a workforce ready and willing to work. We also have an enterprise zone that provides tax credits for employers. And just recently the City announced it won the ‘Most Business Friendly City Award’ in Los Angeles County.

So what went wrong?

Anyone who has worked in corporate America knows how important it is to develop positive relationships in order to do business, which is exactly what the City of Downey did and the City of Long Beach did not do.

Unlike the City of Downey, which marshaled its Mayor and Council to actively court Tesla through calls, letters, ads and personal outreach, Long Beach apparently treated Tesla as a ‘second-class citizen’ according to comments made to me and to the press by Tesla President, Elon Musk. (It would be interesting to examine how much time and effort was really expended by Long Beach officials and staff in recruiting Tesla.)

I would like to congratulate the City of Downey for getting Tesla, and thank them for helping to keep these important types of jobs in the region.”

 
 
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