![]() That includes new arrivals who have lower-paying jobs, or none at all, and are finding out that Reno’s reputation for affordability may be overstated. The regional food bank, which has its headquarters in the industrial park, is now serving 130,000 people a month, a record that far surpasses the 91,000 people who needed assistance before the pandemic. She came from Mexico 25 years ago as her family sought a more comfortable life. “I only work for rent,” she said, explaining the family doesn’t have much left over for gifts or fancy meals. They pay $2,300 for the apartment they share with three children. on a recent Tuesday, a $17-an-hour job she’s held for 10 years. Maria Serfen, 41, was cleaning the salsa counter at a taqueria in downtown Reno at 5:45 a.m. “A lot of people that have lived here for a long time, they don’t like Californians,” he added. Jon Preiss, a smog machine technician who moved here from Colorado in 1995 and lives in a mobile home in Sparks, said he could never afford a house. But “nobody anticipated the full impact.” “Tesla was brought in for all the right reasons,” Silver said. Many Nevadans have begun debating whether the headlong push for growth has accounted for costs such as housing, schools, roads, child care and services for the region’s poor, said Ann Silver, chief executive of the Reno+Sparks Chamber of Commerce. Though none of the arrangements rivaled the deal given to the electric-car giant, they totaled more than $300 million. Storey County has approved 34 tax-break packages for companies other than Tesla since 2012, according to an analysis Nevada’s economic development office prepared for The Times. That’s a recipe for tremendous infrastructure burden.” “And they’re not contributing to the infrastructure needs. “You have an industrial zone that’s roughly the size of Reno and Sparks, with over 125 companies and growing,” he added. “It’s a giant tax haven,” said Mike Pilcher, president of Northern Nevada Central Labor Council, who calls it both “a blessing and curse.” And that has consequences. The second factory announced in January is likely to qualify for a similar subsidy, based on a state law passed for the company in 2014. Tesla and its partners were awarded a subsidy package worth $1.3 billion, helping Nevada beat out other states, including California, to score the Gigafactory. Chief Executive Elon Musk has called the first factory “incredibly romantic,” promising it will someday be five times larger than the Pentagon, making it the largest building on Earth. 24, Tesla announced it’s building a second, $3.6-billion plant to produce semi-trucks. Tesla says it employs more than 10,000 people at its $6.2-billion factory here, a joint venture that includes Panasonic. ![]() Wild horses, only visible in the distance, have access to the occasional water station. Across the way, about 2,500 trucks drive in and out of the Walmart fulfillment center every day, he said. Kris Thompson, the park’s project manager, can cover only a portion of the construction as he drives through miles of winding roads in his Chevrolet Suburban, pointing out landmarks: 500 acres up that mountain where Nanotech is building a cold storage operation, 1,200 acres in a valley for Google’s build-out. Politics The United States of California, a series exploring the state’s vast impact on the nationĮlectric cars, climate credit schemes, diverse boardrooms and legal weed: How California exports its ideas and policies across the U.S. Their migration has prompted more development - new luxury apartment complexes clustered around shopping districts with faux trees that light up at night, high-end fitness centers and easy access to In-N-Out Double-Doubles and limp fries. Here, they can retire or work from home or the ski slopes while keeping close ties to the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles. In the last three years, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed another wave of Californians into northern Nevada. But its massive tax breaks, vast footprint and speedy permitting process have lured droves of big tech companies and their wealth to this remote expanse - inside and beyond the property’s borders. The industrial park boasts few amenities there’s not even a Starbucks. The Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, billed as the world’s largest, covers 166 square miles, roughly the size of New Orleans or Denver. Yet as yellow excavators flatten hilltops in the high desert to make way for boxy factories and endless rows of truck bays, the connections between the two places keep tightening.Ĭalifornia residents and companies have poured into northern Nevada since Tesla began building its battery pack factory in a business park outside Reno in 2014. The wild horses, sagebrush and snow-dusted mountains make this scrubby expanse of northern Nevada seem farther than 265 miles from the bikeable campuses and rooftop kombucha bars of Silicon Valley.
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