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In 1987, the mighty agri-biz & consumer foodstuffs giant, ConAgra, gave its historic hometown, Omaha Nebraska, a ‘Come-to-Jesus’ civic wake-up call; “get your urban act together or we’re outtahere.” The Omaha elite got busy, started taking names and kicking-ass, and turned it around. At least for ~30 more years; CA moved its focused HQ operations to Chicago in 2016.
Tucson will not be so fortunate with its #1 private employer, the globally-connected, armaments & technology behemoth, Raytheon. Raytheon quickly moved its Missile Division Headquarters (MDHQ) to Tucson in early 2020, prior to moving its entire corporate HQ to the Washington DC Metro from Waltham, Mass. this year.
I can make the case Raytheon will move its MDHQ out of Tucson at the earliest opportunity, along with some significant pieces of its critical production processes. The reasons? Same ones I gave in If Woke Tucson Can’t Perform, Remaining Big Employers Will Leave. It will become breathtakingly obvious to Raytheon executives, after crunching their own personnel data, and realizing the talent base just won’t be sustainable.
They will be joining past big employers like IBM, Burr-Brown, Texas Instruments, and many other sub-sub contractors who finally realized Tucson is a passive, desultory & luring oasis in the Southwest, but with bitter alkaline water.
It doesn’t have to be this way; but to avoid it, radical changes in the nature, outlook, and functions of local “leadership” will be needed. I catalogued just the basics (and they’re really minimal in civic terms) in Tucson’s Flawed Institutions Fail Its Metro’s Potential.
Notwithstanding its critical role in the Ukraine War, but with the FAR LARGER aspect of a multi-trillion $$$ “Space Economy” set to commence, expecting the Raytheon MDHQ to stick around is genuine municipal naiveté, writ large. Furthermore, believing the self-serving PR swill from the University of Arizona’s meager (compared to major tech universities) space efforts won’t cut it either. Time to get realistic about what UA really does bring to the table compared with others.
Tucson’s hidebound elite seems to think, “if we just yap-it-up with more meetings, [local] print PR, and conferences, it’ll [somehow] happen by osmosis.” Yeah right. Places in Texas, Alabama, and Colorado are throwing Ben Franklins at your nickels, dimes, and quarters. They have more national political stroke in DC, and make their local academic, political, and ‘Woke’ bozos toe the line. Tucson can’t even fix its road, street, and transportation messes, let alone its broad poverty & crime problems, while nearly ~40% of its Metro is unincorporated in corrupt Pima County, and its largest Pub-Ed system is a bloated government jobs scheme, a la the notorious Albuquerque Public Schools. Gimmeabreak!
Sorry, I’m taking odds the Raytheon MDHQ is going to be leaving, the minute they see the incentives & conditions from those places that have investigated Tucson, and are more in keeping with the kinds of talent they need to attract, and the urban conditions in which that talent seeks to work & grow, play, and raise a family.
Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization
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