This Sacramento facility needs big cash to achieve big zero-emissions transportation dreams

A grand vision awaits the vacant parking lot filled with weeds and dead wood from fallen trees in a run-down industrial area on Ramona Avenue in Sacramento.

Once the home of a juvenile detention center, the 25-acres is slated to house the California Mobility Center, which will be a center of innovation in the zero emissions transportation sector.

What’s missing is $140 million, the cost of building the center.

Orville Thomas, the mobility center’s new director, said he hopes construction starts next year. The center could open 18 to 36 months after that.

But in a difficult funding environment, Thomas conceded the plan is ambitious, with the goal to construct an institution devoted to accelerating the development of electric vehicles and other clean-tech mobility products.

Plans for the 200,000-square-foot facility include a factory to build new clean energy mobility products, labs for Sacramento State engineering students and a test track for carbon-free vehicles.

Only a half-mile south of Sacramento State, the facility is on a side street, surrounded by vacant lots, industrial buildings and a closed garbage recycling facility.

Sacramento officials hope the mobility center will spur new development. The City of Sacramento designated 240 acres in 2019 as the future home of the Sacramento Center for Innovation, a research park for clean technology industries.

Thomas, who became CEO of the mobility center in mid-November, said he is talking to federal and state officials, lawmakers and foundation officials as he makes the case for money to build the center.

“I think state legislative leaders may be positioned to include some money in the state budget next year,” he said.

Tough time for funding

Thomas’ quest for funding comes at a tough time. Estimates are that the California state government faces a record $68 million budget deficit next year.

Thomas said California has led the nation in standards for zero-emissions technology, and Sacramento is the center of the development of those rules, making the city a logical place for a zero-emissions technology institute that could provide high-tech jobs for local residents.

California was the first state in the U.S. to ban the sale of new carbon-emitting cars and big-rig trucks. The sale of new passengers using fossil fuel will stop by 2035. The rule applies to new trucks in 2036.

Thinking big, Thomas envisions the center could create thousands of jobs, direct and indirect, spurring other enterprises and putting Sacramento on the map as a mobility innovation hub.

He said the importance of the mobility center can’t be understated, a message Thomas said plans to bring to potential funders.

“I want to make sure they know this project is just not a priority for our region but the opportunity it possesses to amplify what’s going on all across the state when comes to clean energy power and in zero-emission innovation,” he said.

So far the mobility center, which has operated out of a temporary space, a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in Depot Park since 2021, has not raised any funds for the new building.

Sacramento State donated the land for the mobility center’s planned permanent home. It originally planned to build facility housing on the site.

Thomas enters his new job with a hi-tech and emissions-free transportation industry background. His most recent job was as state policy director for CalStart, which helps workers find clean-tech mobility jobs.

Vision of SMUD official

The mobility center first came into existence in 2019. It was the idea of Arlen Orchard, the retired CEO and general manager of electric utility provider SMUD. Orchard now serves as the chairman of the center’s board.

SMUD has also provided $15 million in funding for the center and has provided administrative support.

Even without a permanent home on Ramona Avenue, the mobility center’s temporary facility in Depot Park, known as the ramp-up factory, was supposed to show its potential for building zero-emissions products.

New zero-emissions mobility products would be developed and commercialized for consumer use.

“We want to get new products onto the street and into people’s hands,” Orchard said during a 2022 tour of the facility.

The new product development envisioned never happened in a meaningful way.

Top officials leave

Little has changed this year, except that the top leader of the mobility center left.

The Mobility Center’s first CEO, Mark Rosekind, the former top administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, resigned in April this year after less than a year on the job.

His departure came after Sacramento County voters defeated a measure in November 2022 that would have helped fund building the mobility center.

It would have increased the Sacramento County sales tax to fund various transportation projects, including around $100 million for the mobility center’s permanent home.

Rosekind had been recruited for the job with a key mandate to oversee the development of the mobility center’s new building.

The center also saw Mark Rawson, its founding chief operating officer, leave in October 2022.

“You got to understand the potential kind of shifted for the mobility center as we went through some leadership difficulties,” said Jonathan Bowman, Mobility Center board treasurer and secretary. “We’ve got a leader now that’s going to help us move in the right direction.”

Bowman, Sacramento State’s vice president for administration and business affairs and its chief financial officer, said the ramp-up facility shifted to providing job training in advanced manufacturing for thousands of youth after the leadership changes.

Also scrapped after the leadership departures was a program with 65 corporations paying membership dues to interact with thought leaders in the clean energy mobility space.

Bowman said the idea was to foster collaboration on innovative new products the center could develop.

“We over-forecast what the program could bring into the organization,” he said. “It just didn’t work out.”

Bowman said workforce training is important and will continue but Thomas has been charged with reviving the plans to develop innovative mobility products at the center.

He said if the center can develop those products, it could show why it’s important to fund the permanent facility.

“There’s nothing better than having some success,” he said.

Thomas said he is exploring reviving the membership program.

“We are looking at the membership program and how it fits within our mission,” he said.

Thomas said the mobility center has “much-untapped potential”

He said it needs to find partners to build clean transportation projects today.

“I think we want to be realistic and hope that we can start just at the most micro level of making it something that can be an opportunity for innovation,” he said.