When people ask me why the county signed an economic incentive agreement with World View, an innovative, homegrown space technology company, the answer is simple: βNearly 500 high-paying new jobs.β
Job creation is the only reason for entering into economic incentive agreements with existing or new companies. The Great Recession hammered our economy; yet while the rest of the country has recovered from the recession and then some, Pima County still has not added back all of the jobs lost.
The Board of Supervisors and I have been focused on expanding and diversifying our economy. Our Economic Development Plan, first adopted in 2012 and significantly updated in 2015, not only seeks to add back those lost jobs, but to add new, high-wage jobs in targeted key industries.
Aerospace is one of those targeted industries. World View is a high-profile company with multimillion dollar contracts with NASA, defense contractors and universities that needs a manufacturing headquarters and launch facility to start delivering on its contracts. Spaceport communities in New Mexico and Florida were offering ready-to-go facilities to the company during its national site search last year.
Pima County wanted to keep those jobs here, not wave goodbye to World View as it packed up and headed east to another state more willing to provide economic-development incentives.
The county proposed a forward-thinking incentive package in which the county would build, finance and own a $15 million manufacturing building, as well as a public launch pad approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for high-altitude balloon launches. This facility would then be leased to World View, and the county would recover our full costs associated with the land, building and financing over the term of the lease. In fact, we would recover $4 million more over the lease period than the total cost of our investment.
World View is a win-win proposition. The company gets the facilities it needs to be successful and grow, adding jobs quickly, and the county gets hundreds of high-paying jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity over the term of the 20-year lease.
Now the Goldwater Institute calls our agreement with World View an improper gift of public funds to a private company and has sued to stop it. This politically motivated litigation is a serious mistake by Goldwater. It signals to every enterprise wanting to expand here that Arizona is a business risk.
Clearly, there is no gift or loan of public funds involved in this deal, since World View pays more in rent than the project cost the county.
Pima County is now working with our partners, the Arizona Commerce Authority and Sun Corridor Inc. (formerly TREO), to attract other companies here.
Incentives will be involved. Every community in the country is offering incentives to companies to either keep them where they are or entice them to relocate.
Our World View agreement is not dissimilar from the city of Mesaβs agreement to build a $20 million manufacturing building for Able Engineering and then recover its cost through a 20-year lease. Recently, the city of Scottsdale agreed to spend $25 million to build hangars for the Gemini Air Group and recover its cost over a 20-year lease. Other metro Phoenix communities are providing cash incentives, including to some of the biggest companies in the country, such as General Motors and PayPal.
Goldwater has expressed little or no concern about these incentives. Goldwater in its lawsuit derides World View as a βluxury adventure tourism business.β Well, Gemini Air Group, which is the beneficiary of the Scottsdale incentive, is a small luxury charter air service with only a couple dozen employees, not 500. Also, there is no apparent requirement to add more employees in exchange for the $25 million Scottsdale hangar. Goldwater hasnβt sued.
Incentives are required to be economically competitive, and Pima County either competes or stands on the sidelines and watches jobs go elsewhere.
Goldwater needs to let us get on with growing our economy and bringing good jobs to the community.
