Quick Take
For decades, California’s Central Coast watched major economic booms happen elsewhere, writes Doug Erickson, co-founder of Santa Cruz Works. Now, Monterey Bay DART, Joby Aviation, UC Santa Cruz and a coalition of both regional and international partners are building a new aviation ecosystem that is attracting investment, workforce funding and international attention.
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Most regions chase the next economic boom. California’s Central Coast is trying something harder: building one.
Silicon Valley captured the rewards of the internet, and now the artificial intelligence boom is concentrating wealth in a handful of places. Santa Cruz, Monterey and surrounding communities have rarely been at the center of the industries shaping the future. Too often, the Central Coast has been left competing for tourism dollars, agricultural margins and housing that grows increasingly unaffordable for the workers who keep the region running.
But a coalition including UC Santa Cruz, local governments, startups and global partners is quietly assembling something unusual here — an advanced aviation ecosystem built around drones, electric aircraft and the workforce needed to operate them.
While much of California talks about innovation, we in Santa Cruz and on the Central Coast are beginning to build it.
The pieces are already in place.
Joby Aviation, which has raised north of $2 billion and is closer to Federal Aviation Administration certification than any of its competitors, manufactures in Marina. AirSpace Integration is building drone corridor infrastructure along the coast. UCSC has nearly $3 million flowing into drone workforce curriculum. The Monterey Bay Tech Hub has pulled in over $10 million in regional investment, including a $7.4 million state award to develop operational flight corridors connecting Central Coast airports.
That’s not a news release. That’s a moat. It’s a competitive advantage that other regions can’t easily replicate.
Now add the Netherlands.
In August 2025, DART — Drone, Aviation and Robotics Technology, the region’s advanced air mobility nonprofit — joined a California delegation on a 10-day trip to Amsterdam and signed the Transatlantic Agreement on Air Mobility. The partnership advanced when the Dutch came to Marina in October and toured Joby’s facility and AirSpace Integration’s coastal test range in La Selva Beach.
On June 18 and 19, they came back, touring Santa Cruz and Monterey as part of a 10-day California exchange. I attended the exchange, and I can say we made lifelong friends and had the kind of candid conversation that doesn’t happen at trade shows. The group visited Joby’s Santa Cruz headquarters, Marina, NASA Ames Research Center at Sunnyvale’s Moffett Field and many more related industry leaders. They were impressed with the curriculum at Pajaro Valley Unified School District, where high school students are building an actual airplane that they will one day learn to fly.
Here’s why this matters more than it looks: The Netherlands might just be the best-managed small geography on Earth. These are people who turned a country literally below sea level into one of the most productive agricultural and logistics ecosystems in the world. When the Dutch show up to examine your drone corridors, you’re not doing them a favor. They’re vetting you.
But the real story isn’t the transatlantic handshake. It’s the workforce pipeline.
DART and Hartnell College have launched MsUAS Pathways — a two-year, James Irvine Foundation-funded program designed to move farmworker families, first-generation college students, military veterans and Seaside youth into FAA-certified drone careers. One hundred and fifty participants. Fifty certifications. Backed by a UC Santa Cruz statewide curriculum initiative with $3 million behind it.
This is the part most economic development stories get wrong. They chase the big manufacturer. They chase the investment. They chase the ribbon-cutting. The regions that win the next economy are the ones that train the people who will actually operate it. The Central Coast is doing both.
Joby brings the aircraft. AirSpace Integration builds the corridors. UCSC and Hartnell build the workforce. The Monterey Bay Tech Hub holds the coalition together and makes the case to Sacramento and Brussels. Every piece has a function. Every function has an owner.
That is a strategy. Most regions don’t have a strategy. They have a brochure.
The risk is what it always is with coalitions: entropy. Funding cycles end. Institutional priorities shift. The history of regional economic development is littered with tech hubs and innovation districts and corridor initiatives that peaked at the news release and quietly dissolved when the grant ran out.
The Central Coast has a two-to-three-year window to prove the model before the next funding cycle requires a new narrative. The Dutch visit on June 18, organized in partnership with Monterey Bay DART and UC Santa Cruz, is not the finish line. It’s a midterm exam. It will give the delegation firsthand exposure to the ecosystem DART and its partners are building here — and open a genuine dialogue about what the Netherlands and California can learn from each other.
Whereas geopolitical headwinds ground most regions, the Central Coast is already airborne. And partners like the Netherlands are already in formation with us.
Doug Erickson is the executive director of Santa Cruz Works, a regional nonprofit that empowers local businesses and entrepreneurs through skills-building, funding, jobs, networking and events. Erickson worked in tech for 35 years and founded Fleetwood/Surftech – a windsurf company – that grew to No. 2 in the world. Erickson is a UC Santa Cruz graduate.
