Goodrich Bought Out After Chula Vista Redevelopment Agency Relocates Company

United Technologies Corporation bought out the Goodrich Corporation on September 21. The purchase includes a Chula Vista company called Goodrich Aerostructures, which employs over 2000 people.

Although some business media voiced concerns about potential layoffs, on September 23 Wall Street Journal bureau chief Andrew Dowell speculated that the scenario was not one of consolidation. Instead, he suggested that United Technologies was trying to “buy growth” in that it had purchased “a business related to theirs but not one that they were already in.”

Goodrich, located on the outer perimeter of Chula Vista’s bayfront, has enjoyed a special relationship with the city.

In anticipation of bayfront development that didn’t materialize, the city, through its redevelopment agency, relocated Goodrich factory buildings. According to a 2007 Union-Tribune article, “The bayfront has incurred a $2 million deficit by spending more on redevelopment activity — such as relocating the BF Goodrich factory away from the water front — than its tax increment brought in.”

In 2010, Goodrich and Chula Vista’s Redevelopment Agency signed an agreement in which the city pledged $5 million to help Goodrich with toxic remediation in exchange for Goodrich dropping its formal opposition to the city’s bayfront development plan.