HUTTO -- It's official. Tesla's new gigafactory will be built outside Reno, Nevada.
For several Texas cities the news comes as a blow, among them Hutto, which hosted Tesla representatives as many as eight times in the last year.
Hutto offered many of the amenities the California car company was looking for - cheap land, access to rail and plenty of incentives, but in the end it may have been the location that proved to be the deal breaker.
"You're talking about three hours from Reno to Freemont versus Central Texas which is a much longer train haul. So I think it really came down to location," said Hutto Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Joey Grisham.
Tesla's $5 billion gigafactory is expected to create 6,500 jobs. An incentive package put forward by Hutto and nearby Taylor, along with county and state funding offered more than $800 million over 20 years. Chamber of Commerce President John Darby believes it would have changed the face of this small town.
"A company like Tesla, with a factory and an investment of that size, that's akin to hitting the jackpot," Hutto Chamber of Commerce President John Darby said.
More than 1,000 acres were set aside to build the Tesla factory, but Tesla or not, the economic development commission said it's land that won't go to waste.
"We'll keep marketing the sites, we obviously will have a lot of attention now," said Grisham. "It's one of the few rail sights, mega sites, in the state and the country."
If a company does more onto the property, taxes will be split between Hutto and Taylor.
The Hutto Economic Development Corporation is currently in talks with several companies interested in the site. One would bring 1,500 jobs, the other, more than 2,000.
