Joby Aviation Opens New HQ in Santa Cruz

Joby’s devel­op­ment and expan­sion relent­less­ly march­es on as it now moves in to a big­ger and bet­ter Head­quar­ters at 345, Enci­nal Street in San­ta Cruz, the largest city and coun­ty seat of San­ta Cruz coun­ty in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. With a pop­u­la­tion of 63,000, locals are delight­ed that a pio­neer­ing avi­a­tion com­pa­ny has come to town, offer­ing poten­tial new jobs and kudos to the local pop­u­lace.

The HQ is a for­mer Plantron­ics office that designed, man­u­fac­tured and mar­ket­ed light­weight com­mu­ni­ca­tions head­set prod­ucts, famous­ly used by the Apol­lo 11 crew and for Neil Arm­strong to utter his famous, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The build­ing was first estab­lished in 1961, so it is apt that it’s been tak­en over by a com­pa­ny lead­ing the future of avi­a­tion.

Thank you to @CityofSantaCruz May­or Kee­ley, @sccounty, @SantaCruzBiz and more than 100 oth­er friends, neigh­bors, and esteemed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who joined us yes­ter­day as we cut the rib­bon on Joby’s new HQ.
Found­ed in San­ta Cruz, Joby now employs more than 1500 peo­ple and… pic.twitter.com/KSpi1Ib0LV

— Joby Avi­a­tion (@jobyaviation) June 6, 2023

Over 100 local guests, dig­ni­taries, media mem­bers and Joby investors attend­ed the upbeat speech­es and rib­bon cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny on Mon­day (June 5th), fol­lowed by a tour of the 162,000-square-foot facil­i­ty and lat­er the delights of assort­ed bev­er­ages, flat­bread piz­zas, empanadas and arti­choke beignets in the court­yard plant. Joby Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt told the atten­dees, “Being able to take on such an icon­ic cam­pus is an incred­i­ble gift and marks our long-term com­mit­ment to San­ta Cruz and the local com­mu­ni­ty.”

Cer­tain­ly, it is a far cry from four­teen years ago when an idea took flight in the San­ta Cruz Moun­tains and a small team of sev­en engi­neers led by Bevirt worked out of a barn to explore new avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies. For those who are aware of the Joby his­to­ry, these brain­storms gave way to a part­ner­ship with NASA to devel­op an eVTOL Air­craft. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

Watch Video

https://news.yahoo.com/joby-aviation-unveils-headquarters-santa-181122726.html

With a team that has grown to more than 1,500 employ­ees, a move to a much larg­er premis­es was nec­es­sary lead­ing to a USD25.5 mil­lion pur­chase of a por­tion of the for­mer Plantron­ic cam­pus, lat­er named Poly, build­ing.

Bevirt then told the atten­dees that the idea for the Joby air­craft first stemmed from mem­o­ries of com­mut­ing from the moun­tains just to attend his local Gate­way School. “I loved where I went to school, and I loved where I lived, but they were a long way apart,” he explained. “I had a dream of build­ing a bet­ter way to get from A to B from the school I loved to the home I loved.”

Mean­while, Oliv­er Jones, Joby’s Head of Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, said, “We’ve gone from a few peo­ple 10 years ago to 1,500 peo­ple today. The main thing we need is space. It’s gonna serve as a base for our cor­po­rate head­quar­ters, but we will also do a lot of research and devel­op­ment work here.”

May­or Fred Kee­ley

Juliane Far­rand, Joby’s Head of Peo­ple, com­ment­ed, she start­ed at the com­pa­ny when it was just “50 peo­ple in an unheat­ed barn in the mid­dle of Bon­ny Doon.” Far­rand remarked, “We’ve had sev­er­al moves since then and final­ly land­ed at our dream loca­tion here in the heart of San­ta Cruz.”

May­or Fred Kee­ley said it was a spe­cial day for the city and one that had been des­ig­nat­ed as Joby Avi­a­tion Day. He praised Bevirt for choos­ing to stay in San­ta Cruz, rather than being allured by San Fran­cis­co or Sil­i­con Val­ley, to bring the company’s plans into fruition. He enthused, “This flows through­out the com­mu­ni­ty. The ben­e­fits of this are not only world­wide, they are real­ly impor­tant here in our com­mu­ni­ty and in the mayor’s com­mu­ni­ty in Mari­na.”

Bevirt said he looked for­ward to Joby bring­ing eco­nom­ic vital­i­ty for the local peo­ple.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.jobyaviation.com

(News Source: https://www.santacruzsentinel.com)

(Top image: Cred­it — San­ta Cruz Sen­tinel)