Former GM plant sits idle awaiting radical 3-wheel car
SHREVEPORT, La. -- Shreveport's former General Motors Assembly Plant could soon be spinning textiles even if it never boots up its vehicle assembly lines to make an unusual three-wheeled car.
A company called the Gulf Coast Spinning Company will relocate to the shuttered factory even though a startup automaker, Elio Motors, has been taken space in the same facility.
Elio Motors rents approximately 1.5 million square feet of the former GM assembly plant from industrial developer Stuart Lichter which holds the lease to the 4.1 million square foot building. Elio Motors did not respond to multiple requests for interviews.
Licter, president and board chairman the Industrial Realty Group, also sits on Elio's board. He also did not respond to an interview request. Onno Steger, IRG's real estate director, said he could not speak about Elio or Gulf Coast Spinning Company.
Outside of the former General Motors Assembly Plant is a drooping sign reading "New Home of Elio Motors."
Elio has been trying to raise money to build a radical three-wheel car at the plant. It would was designed to get 84 miles a gallon and cost about $6,800.
There's no current manufacturing happening at the plant. By all outward appearances the facility seemed empty on July 1. There were a few cars in the parking and a lone guard manned the window inside the front entryway.
Elio Motors has yet to start production at the plant more than two-and-half years after it announced its much anticipated three-wheel Elio.
The project was supposed to breathe new life into the former GM plant, which once was a vital hub of manufacturing in Shreveport.
Elio's promise was to bring new jobs — 1,500 of them.
The parish got behind the project and bankrolled the $7.5 million transaction involving taxpayer dollars. The Caddo Parish Industrial Development Board purchased the facility. From there the building was leased to Lichter's Shreveport Business Park, which was determined to help Elio set up operations there.
Production, at one point, was set to start in March of this year but that was pushed back due to lack of capital. Since then, production has been pushed several times for the same reason.
In January, Elio Motors Paul Elio said he needed $230 million to start production and that production would be pushed back again until 2016.
Caddo commissioners and parish administrator Woody Wilson have backed away from the project and are insistent the plant's future is no longer in their hands. Lichter is the one to call, Wilson said when The Times inquired about Gulf Coast Spinning last week.