Rey Mashayekhi here. When Joby Aviation passed over Marina for the site of its largest production facility to date in September—opting for Dayton, Ohio, instead—it was undoubtedly a blow to local business leaders and government officials who had spent months pitching the electric air taxi startup on expanding its footprint in Monterey County.
After all, Joby is based just up the road in Santa Cruz, and has had an existing local footprint since 2018, when it set up what’s now a 120,000-square-foot research and development facility at Marina Municipal Airport. The company even launched its pilot production line at the Marina location this past summer—capable of cranking out dozens of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles per year—and Marina officials were willing to grant Joby hundreds of acres of additional land and state-backed tax incentives to lure a new 600,000-square-foot factory promising nearly 2,000 new jobs.
It was easy to see Joby’s choice of Ohio, which promised the company some $325 million in benefits and incentives, as an indictment of the overall business climate in California, and a blow to the Central Coast’s aspirations to diversify its economy and expand its tech and manufacturing industries. Local stakeholders like Monterey Bay DART and CSU Monterey Bay had pinned their hopes on Joby anchoring the region as a hub for the emerging advanced air mobility sector, with competitors like Archer Aviation and Wisk Aero—which have facilities in Salinas and Hollister, respectively—also nearby.
Yet despite Joby’s decision, there was reason for optimism. Both publicly and privately, the company’s leadership—led by CEO and California native JoeBen Bevirt—has consistently talked up the Central Coast as key to their future plans. And as the Weekly reported back in September, Joby was set to realize that commitment by plotting a significant expansion in Marina—one that would invest around $50 million to nearly double its square footage at the airport and create some 600 new jobs there.
On Friday, Nov. 17, those plans finally came into clarity with the announcement that Joby had received a $9.8 million grant from the California Competes program, run by the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), to help finance its Marina expansion. More importantly, that money—part of $149 million in grants and tax credits that GO-Biz awarded to 12 tech companies across the state—will be complemented by a $41.3 million investment from Joby itself.
That money will help fund 690 new full-time jobs across Joby’s expanded Marina facility and its offices in Santa Cruz and San Carlos, according to the company. In turn, it will create more skilled manufacturing jobs benefiting the local workforce—the kinds of opportunities that Joby has already been developing in partnership with the Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative (SIEDI) and other community groups.
Joby’s Marina expansion “affirms California’s commitment to build the future of advanced air mobility through a partnership with government, community, and industry, which I like to describe as the Marina Way,” California State Sen. Anna Caballero said in a statement. “The Marina Way can be a model for how we solve climate, housing, and transportation challenges.”
So while the economics may mean California, and the Central Coast, may never be the sexiest place to build a massive manufacturing facility, the deal proves that this part of the country still has much to offer emerging companies at the cutting edge of tech and manufacturing. That bodes well for Monterey County’s economic future, and that of its working people.