New Competitiveness Package Cements Arizona Status as Business Location of Choice

Tucson-Based Raytheon Missile Systems Lands $475 Million Contract

New 70,000 Square Foot Sargent Aerospace & Defense Facility to Open Summer 2011

Arizona's Bioscience Sector Continues Job Growth Despite Recession

Tucson-based SOLON Chosen to Construct 15 MW Solar Power Plant for California Energy Supplier PG&E

1.6 Megawatt Solar Array Goes Online at UA TechPark Solar Zone, More to Follow

Downtown Tucson: $120 Million in Private Investment Builds Urban Core

In order to ensure Arizona remains a business location of choice, Governor Jan Brewer signed into law one of the most significant pieces of economic legislation in Arizona state history on February 17, 2011. The Arizona Competitiveness Package (HB2001) includes a mix of targeted business incentives and broad tax reforms designed to spur Arizona’s economy.

Key highlights of the bill include the creation of a $25 million deal-closing fund, reauthorization of Arizona's job training program (one of the best in the nation), and improvements to existing tax programs. These tax code adjustments give Arizona one of the lowest-cost tax environments in the nation.

The bill also establishes the Arizona Commerce Authority, which replaces the current Arizona Department of Commerce. The Authority will focus on the retention and recruitment of qualify jobs and make Arizona a destination of the nation’s highly-sought after businesses and corporate ventures.

A summary of the package can be found on the TREO website: click here to view.

For more information on the Tucson region, please contact:

Michael Guymon
Vice President, Regional Development
520.243.1909 or michael.guymon@treoaz.org

Tucson-based missile builder Raytheon has landed a $475 million contract with Saudi Arabia to transform freefalling bombs into precision guided missiles aimed at a specific target.

Raytheon will provide the Saudis with a kit that transforms 'dumb' bombs into smart missiles. The company says it will also partner with Saudi Arabian industry to provide support equipment. A Raytheon news release says the sale keeps production lines operating in the United States while providing security in the Persian Gulf Region.

Click here for additional news from Raytheon Missile Systems.

In 2009, Tucson-based Sargent Aerospace & Defense looked at consolidating its nationwide operations. After considering a short list of three sites, Sargent chose to expand its Tucson-region operation by building a new 70,000 square foot facility next to its existing 60,000 square foot building. Construction began at once.

Now, nearly nine months later, the new construction has risen from the desert floor, and Sargent is looking forward to a grand-opening celebration this summer.

Click here to visit the Sargent website.

During the recessionary years of 2008-09, bioscience jobs in Arizona grew by 7 percent while Arizona’s overall private sector lost 11 percent of its jobs, according to a new performance analysis of Arizona’s bioscience sector, commissioned by the Flinn Foundation.

The annual study by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice found that Arizona continues to outpace the nation in generating bioscience jobs and firms, and the state has reached an all-time high in grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health, the gold standard of biomedical research funding. Recent expansions over the last few years include Roche/Ventana Medical Systems, and sanofi-aventis.

“We already knew that Arizona is one of the nation’s fastest-growing states in the biosciences,” said Walter Plosila, senior advisor to the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice. “We now know that this growth is not limited to good economic times.”

Bioscience jobs in Arizona have increased 32 percent to a total of 90,219 since the 2002 launch of Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap, the state’s long-term strategy to build a nationally competitive bioscience sector. This is nearly three times the U.S. growth rate of 11 percent during this time period. The jobs pay an average of $57,360, 36 percent higher than Arizona’s private-sector average.

Read about the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap and get updates here: http://flinn.org/bio-roadmap/progress

SOLON Corporation, a provider of turnkey solar power plants and manufacturer of crystalline silicon solar modules in the U.S., has been awarded a contract for the construction of a 15 MW (AC) solar power plant in California for Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), which supplies natural gas and electric service to approximately 15 million people in Northern and Central California.

The construction of the plant, which will cover an area of approximately 160 acres, will start in April 2011 and is scheduled for completion by October 2011. The system will utilize SOLON’s Velocity MW cluster concept with fixed tilt mounting and SOLON’s SCADA system for remote control and monitoring. The power plant will be constructed in the vicinity of Fresno in central California.

For the complete SOLON press release, click here.

The 222-acre Solar Zone is a comprehensive solar business zone located within the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park. The Zone is dedicated to the creation of a competitive environment for companies in the sector to roll out current and next-generation energy products, while attracting key suppliers and talent in order to promote industry success and advancement.

The Zone plan calls for on-site installations of six different solar technologies, each developed by a different company, resulting in the largest multi-technology solar demonstration site in the United States.

The output of these installed research and demonstration systems ranges in size from 1.6MW to 5MW. The first of these systems, a sun-tracking, 1.6-megawatt photovoltaic array built for Tucson Electric Power (TEP) by Tucson-based Solon Corp, went online this month.

The Solon array is the first to be dedicated to TEP's new Bright Tucson Community Solar program, in which customers will be able to "buy" monthly blocks of solar energy at a small premium over normal power rates.

Other TEP-backed projects planned for the Solar Zone use different solar technologies, including a concentrating photovoltaic system built by California-based Amonix Inc. - which use lenses to focus light on photovoltaic cells to boost light collection and cut materials costs - and a solar thermal plant from Bell Independent Power Company, which will focus sunlight to heat up a steam generator and store heat for use after dark.

For more news from the Solar Zone, click here.

More than 40 private sector pioneers have committed more than $120 million to downtown Tucson developments big and small in the past 2+ years, creating more than 900 downtown jobs. Private investment goes hand-in-hand with some $200 million in public sector investments started or completed in the past 30 months.

In all, Downtown has seen more than $320 million in development during the depths of the worst economy since the Great Depression. And that development generated an estimated 3,000 or more construction jobs, based on standard national multipliers. These investments have attracted the attention of numerous regional institutions:

UA Establishes Downtown Presence
University of Arizona Downtown (UAD) will utilize the historic Roy Place Building for a new center dedicated to research, outreach and teaching. UAD will serve as an interface between college and community, a "nerve center" where UA faculty members and students can connect with city officials and staff, community leaders and project developers for dialogue, vision, analysis and development of sustainable scenarios for the future.

UAD also will serve as a forum where academic, civic, cultural and business leaders will meet to discuss and debate multiple sustainability scenarios for the future of Tucson and Southern Arizona. Initial academic programs at UAD will include an interdisciplinary Urban Design Studio (Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning), and Historic Preservation with other programs like Real Estate Development to follow. The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences' initial programs will include Master of Public Administration and Policy and Master of Geographic Information Technology and Science.

Sonoran Institute Consolidates in Move Downtown
The Sonoran Institute, which seeks to conserve Western open spaces from the grasslands of southeast Arizona to the prairies of Montana, announced it will consolidate its operations from several buildings across the city to a single location downtown. By April, the Sonoran Institute will occupy the third floor of the former City Annex building, currently under complete renovation.

The new headquarters will be a perfect fit for the institute's mission of trying to rebuild downtowns as part of a broader strategy to protect farther-flung open spaces.

For more updates on Downtown Tucson, click here.