The City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday to pursue an agreement to bring an all-electric autonomous vehicle company called Ohmio to Riverside from New Zealand to set up its international headquarters here and manufacture the vehicles. The facility would be the only autonomous shuttle advanced manufacturer in the United States.
The company, which recently completed a pilot program at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, is interested in a 40,000-square-foot facility on Mount Vernon Avenue in the Hunter Park industrial area. Ohmio also would bring its research and development function to the city, test vehicles here and designate Riverside as its point of sale, which would direct future sales taxes to the City.
Ohmio is interested in locating to Riverside due to close proximity to the Southern California headquarters of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which relocated to Riverside two years ago. CARB continues to spur additional vehicle-related research and development businesses within the City. Ohmio also would benefit from proximity to UC Riverside, its Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT), as well as California Baptist University, La Sierra University, and the Riverside Community College District.
Ohmio plans to establish an advanced manufacturing facility in the City of Riverside, with the first locally produced vehicles available next year. The company expects to create as many as 10 jobs initially and expand to as many as 30 jobs during the next three years, from engineers to technicians.
Experts estimate that every job created in advanced manufacturing spurs the creation of 2.5 jobs in other sectors needed to support advanced manufacturing.
For more details regarding the proposed agreement, please check the press release below.
The City of Riverside received the prestigious Helen Putnam Award for Economic Development Through the Arts for its role in the creation of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum.
The award from the League of California Cities, announced during the League’s annual conference in Sacramento, recognizes statewide excellent in government.
“The Helen Putnam Award is the latest recognition for what has become a statewide destination for art lovers and people interested in learning more about Chicano culture,” said Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson, who accepted the award with City Manager Mike Futrell. “It was very gratifying to share this unique asset with conference attendees from around the state.”
The City conceived the idea for The Cheech as a way to breathe new life into a building that had for decades been the Main Library downtown. An innovative partnership with the Riverside Art Museum (RAM) and the actor and comedian Cheech Marin, who donated his massive and impressive collection of Chicano art, has created a nationally recognized center for the arts in downtown Riverside.
The Cheech honors the building’s historic architecture and captures the spirit of its prior use as a place of learning, sharing ideas and inspiring. It also is an economic driver, bringing people from around the world to experience Marin’s eclectic and engaging collection of paintings, sculptures and other works of art, the world’s most renowned Chicano arts collection in private hands.
This public-private partnership created an art museum with a very unique focus, with a Chicano arts collection unrivaled at the national level and around the world, telling the story of Latinos in Riverside and across the nation.
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