Joby’s development and expansion relentlessly marches on as it now moves in to a bigger and better Headquarter 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.
Over 100 local guests, dignitaries, media members and Joby investors attended the upbeat speeches and ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday (June 5th) before 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.
With a team that has grown to more than 1,500 employees, a move to a much larger space 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.
