:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/3MRIJNV47VBO7CR3QMIYADASKE.jpg "Six Flags was able to win Santa Catarina land from Tesla and Elon Musk, but a detail prevented it 1")
the tycoon Elon Musk decided to install its new gigafactory Tesla in Nuevo Leon and for this he instructed his team to buy a huge piece of land on the shores of Santa Catarina, only about nine kilometers from Monterey, however, few remember that the company Six Mexico Flags was about to acquire the land that will occupy the assembly plant.
On March 1, during Tesla Investor Day, held in Austin, Texas, the tycoon presented a model of what the The largest Tesla factory in the world who will sit on the slopes of the Sierra Huasteca, off the Saltillo highway.
But the postcard could have been different, because a few years ago the famous amusement park was about to take over the land that now belongs to Elon Musk.
The entertainment company’s interest in building its second amusement park in Mexico has focused on Nuevo León, just at the end of the PRI government Rodrigue Medina and the beginning of the administration of Jaime Rodriguez Calderon, The Bronco.
According to the archives of El Economista, in October 2015, John Odum, senior vice president of international operations at Six Flagshe met Ferdinand Turnthe First Secretary of Economic Development in the El Bronco administration, to analyze the project.
The plan was to build the gaming complex on the land occupied by the old Santa Catarina Racecourse, located between the toll road and the free highway to Saltillo.
The conditions requested by the company were the the availability of transport and the quality of public services, such as drinking water, electricity and gas.
As for the investment, it was projected at about 400 million dollars, which would trigger the creation of jobs. According to estimates, the construction work would take about 3 years.
Despite the enthusiasm aroused by the project, the negotiations ran out of steam due to complications in the licensing of the brand.
In 2017, Héctor Castillo Olivares, then mayor of Santa Catarina, explained that the project still had hope.
“They are interested in Santa Catarina, here is a situation of the Six Flags company with businessmen outside the United States. It’s a license, it’s a franchise. I understand that they follow other lanes,” the mayor said to justify the delay. of the project.
According to city officials, since 2015, Six Flags executives have been surprised by the benefits of land next to the mountains in Santa Catarina, a location that also dazzled Elon Musk in October 2022, to the point of asking the governor Samuel García during the tour. that he gave to her, that the helicopter should stop in this area to better appreciate the landscape.
With the announcement of the construction of Tesla’s largest assembly plant, capital gains in the region are expected to skyrocket and other suppliers to approach the automaker.
The interest aroused by the announcement of the arrival of Tesla did not surprise the authorities.
It is expected that in the first phase it will generate 6,000 direct jobs and more than 20,000 indirect, and they expect an increase of almost 30% in foreign direct investment, compared to 2022, as well as to a jump in exports and the automotive sector. ., which represents a third of the country’s foreign sales.
Tesla aims to produce one million electric vehicles a year at its facilities in Mexico.
There is still no specific date for the start of construction of the plant in the municipality of Santa Catarina, east of the metropolitan area of Monterrey, the state capital, but the authorities estimate that ‘She could start in about three months.