I recently sent around the photo below of a 1970 front page of the Arizona Daily Star, asking if anyone knew why the subject Motorola plant was never built in metro Tucson.
Immediately below is the answer from a native Tucsonan, a smart businessman who has been lamenting for some time what bad governance and hubris have done to his hometown.
1970: Pima County Planning Commission voted no. A fateful decision. The plant, which would have employed 5,000, went to Austin instead where it’s been creating jobs for over half a century. The mentally challenged assh##### in Pima County thought Motorola would beg the then 3-member Board of Supervisors to reconsider and offer morditas. Nope. Bad move. Motorola said screw you bozos and immediately canceled plans, moving in to Austin. They made a sane and correct decision.
To date myself, I was living in San Antonio in 1970 and preparing to go into the Army as an artillery officer. At the time, Austin was a sleepy college town, and, as the state capital, it was overrun with hidebound bureaucrats. Motorola helped it become the tech center it is today. So did Michael Dell. He started his eponymous computer company in his dorm room at the Univ. of Texas. Dell Computer now has annual revenue of nearly $100 billion.
If a future Michael Dell were to start a comparable business in a dorm room at the Univ. of Arizona, the Tucson establishment would chase him away and he’d end up in Austin, or maybe Phoenix.
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at [email protected].
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