Vallejo Residents Hopeful But Wary About Proposed Electric Car Plant

The Bay Area city of Vallejo has been searching for an economic stimulus since 1996, when the city's U.S. Navy base closed. Vallejo lost tens of thousands of jobs and eventually went bankrupt during the 2008 financial crisis.

Now, a new electric car company called Faraday Future is taking steps to set up a factory in Vallejo. Residents are hopeful, but wary. Faraday is the latest in a line of companies that have shown up promising urban renewal.

Andrea Ouse, Vallejo's community and economic development director, showed me around the old Navy base across from the city on Mare Island. The Navy set up shop here in the 1850s, about a decade before the Civil War. Now the brick buildings are abandoned and boarded-up. Ouse says part of the island looks like the post-apocalyptic movie "Mad Max."

Well, it's not that bleak here. Ouse says a company like Faraday could breathe life back into this part of the old base. Faraday signed an agreement that gives it six months to assess if a 157-acre parcel here is fit for a factory.

Faraday is not the first suitor for Mare Island. Ouse says eight organizations have come in recent years. Not all of them had good intentions, according to Marc Garman, who runs the local blog Vallejo Independent Bulletin. "We've seen our share of hucksters come through town," Garman says.

Garman says during the bankruptcy some outsiders thought they could pull a fast one on a vulnerable city.

"You have a city like this that gets in the headlines for the bankruptcy, of course there is going to people who come along, opportunists," he says.

A woman came from Southern California promising a movie studio. She was later arrested and indicted for fraud. The H. Martin Foundation proposed a spiritual center. Garman says that was found out to be a total scam.

Garman says these big projects are appealing to Vallejo residents because they are trying to fill the void left by the Navy. He says a lot of people are still looking for "the next big thing."

Residents are cautiously optimistic about Faraday Future, Garman says, even though it's not a name-brand company. It's less than 2 years old, has not started making cars, and is largely funded by a foreign billionaire with murky finances. Top employees have come and gone. All this worries some residents, like Sharon McGriff-Payne.

McGriff-Payne’s father was in the Navy and she has lived here since the 1950s. She is skeptical of Faraday.

"I was struck when I saw their website," she says. "Something just flashed in me and I thought, is this too slick?"

But Diana Lang, a local real estate agent, thinks it will be different this time. She says all the bad proposals have prepared residents to negotiate. Lang says she was impressed by what she saw at an open meeting with Faraday a few weeks ago. Lang says, “The public asked about parks, waterfront access, tax bases. There were intelligent, articulate questions. They were welcoming but also cautious.”

City employees like Andrea Ouse say Vallejo is proceeding slowly with Faraday. Ouse says, “We're taking a very incremental approach with them.”

Ouse says the city is making Faraday share valuable survey data it gathers about the old navy base. And the company has paid Vallejo a nonrefundable $200,000 fee to evaluate the land. “If they go away,” Ouse says, “we will at least have something."

If the deal moves forward, Faraday says it would be investing several hundred million dollars in the facility and creating hundreds of jobs. Faraday just broke ground on a larger factory in Nevada. There are still miles to go before the company could move into Vallejo, but there is already buzz here. At a new brewery on the waterfront, I was mistaken for a Faraday employee.

The co-founder of the Mare Island Brewing Co., Kent Fortner, says Faraday or not, Vallejo is having a resurgence. It is out of bankruptcy, and new businesses are coming in. “We don't need a Hail Mary pass at this point,” Fortner says. “We're already moving the ball down the field."

If Faraday fizzles, Fortner says it is only a matter of time before someone else comes to town with a big idea that might actually pan out.