Casa Grande moves forward with Lucid Group development agreement

Casa Grande moves forward with Lucid Group development agreement

 
Article Originally Posted By PhoenixBusinessJournal On July 6, 2022
 

The city of Casa Grande moved forward with its portion of the development agreement for 1,300 acres with Pinal County and Lucid Group Inc. (Nasdaq: LCID) on Tuesday.

The unanimous City Council vote came about a week after Pinal County approved its portion of the development agreement, as well as a lease and purchase agreement for the 1,300 acres and a large bond that could go toward buying the site.

The new agreements will bring the Lucid site to about 2,000 acres overall for a potential expansion and requires Lucid to pay an annual rent of $7.1 million for four years with an option to buy the property. The company has also been purchasing large sites around its property in recent months, while investors have been buying and selling off land in the area. 

The city said at the Council meeting on Tuesday that the company launched a "campaign" a few months ago after establishing a new vision for Casa Grande to assemble 1,300 acres adjacent to their property through a project codename.

The Newark, California-based electric vehicle company has said its AMP-1 plant is expected to total more than 5 million square feet and recently signed a lease for 116,000 square feet of space in Tempe. It also has about 2,000 employees and plans to hire more 6,000 people at full buildout. 

The development agreement says the city of Casa Grande will consider annexing and rezoning sites within the property for industrial development. Specific plans have not been released, but documents said the expansion could make way for a supplier park.

 
"Their impact to the community spans from providing quality jobs with good wages and benefits, to participating in new technical training programs for the residents, to facilitating discussions and contract with new economic development prospects in the form of supply chain companies wanting to locate in the region," city documents said.