Tesla Motors has selected the City of Downey over the City of Long Beach as the manufacturing site for its new Model S, a four-door all-electric family sedan, The District Weekly learned early this afternoon—apparently, we discovered about 5 p.m., at about the same time as The Downey Patriot was learning the same thing.

“We’re very close to being able to make an official announcement,” Downey Mayor Mario Guerra confirmed during a brief telephone interview this afternoon. “I’m about to call a special meeting of the city council, and we’ll likely have an official announcement next week. Cars ought to be rolling off the line in 2011.”

Telephone and e-mail requests for comment were left this morning at Tesla Motors headquarters in San Carlos, CA. So far, no response.

Long Beach and Downey became finalists for the automobile plant because both cities have vast manufacturing sites that were abandoned by the aerospace industry—the former Boeing 717 location in Long Beach and the former NASA production facility in Downey. In fact, the two sites are located only a few miles apart on Lakewood Blvd.

But while Downey’s city officials were united and aggressive in their pursuit of Tesla’s enigmatic CEO Elon Musk, the City of Long Beach—particularly Mayor Bob Foster and city management—was accused of being difficult and nearly indifferent toward the possibility of a manufacturing plant that is expected to bring between 1,000 and 1,200 jobs to the area.

In fact, it was Musk who most strongly voiced that criticism, telling LBReport.com in an August 16 interview that “if the behavior of city management and the Mayor were the deciding factor, Long Beach would definitely not win.”

In that same interview, Musk said Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske was “the first and only call” to him personally and confirmed her internet journal (blog) dispatch to the effect that his company’s staff came away from meetings with other Long Beach officials “thinking that Long Beach actually didn’t really want us there and would much prefer the movie studio.”

A telephoned request for comment to Mayor Foster’s office this afternoon has so far not been returned.

“The movie studio” Musk referred to is the long-proposed and oft-delayed Long Beach Studios. The project, announced more than a year ago, encountered financial problems and fell out of escrow in March, although chairman Jack O’Halloran keeps insisting it hasn’t died.

O’Halloran most most-recently hyped Long Beach Studios as a done deal in an Oct. 10 story in the Press-Telegram that was headlined “Long Beach Studios deal with Boeing to be signed Monday, chairman says.”

But when that Monday came, The District Weekly’s Theo Douglas contacted O’Halloran at 10 a.m., and the one-day-maybe studio chief began to fudge.

“We really can’t comment on this until it’s signed. I’ve been trying to tell these guys,” O’Halloran said, and by “these guys” he meant the other anxious media he’d been talking to. “Today is Columbus Day.”

O’Halloran said that again when Douglas reached him shortly after 7 p.m. that night.

“Nobody works on Columbus Day,” O’Halloran said.

When informed that, actually, lots of people had worked on Columbus Day, O’Halloran countered, “Lawyers don’t,” and there was the rub.

“We need a contract to ink,” O’Halloran said. “All we need is a contract.”

O’Halloran asked for another 48 hours, which would mean we might have expected some results by late Tuesday? Or early Wednesday?

“It could be,” he said.

Nearly two months later, nothing.

Meanwhile, Downey, which already has a movie studio—the eponymous Downey Studios—now seems to nearly have a car company, too.

What’s the secret?

“We’ve worked hard for this for many, many months, and we’ve come a long, long way,” says Guerra. “This is something we’ve been very united about. It’s one of the few things this city council has been 5-0 on.”

For example, in September the entire Downey City Council took a field trip to the Tesla plant in Hawthorne.

“Our goal is to bring jobs to Downey, and we’ve been doing it—with the recent expansion of Kaiser Permanente, the restoration of the Bob’s Big Boy and the arrival of Kohl’s department store and Porto’s Cuban Bakery. The most-recent figures show our unemployment rate is 10.2 percent—not good, but much better than the average around here.”

Guerra says the city’s efforts were also based on civic tradition.

“A manufacturing plant like Tesla belong in those historic aerospace buildings,” he says. “And we’re going to make them into the greenest manufacturing plan in North America.

“We’re getting so close. We worked all through the weekend. We’re working today. We can’t wait to call that special session. I can’t, anyway. I’m tired.”

Tags: Boeing, California, Dave Wielenga, downey, Downey City Council, Downey Mayor Mario Guerra, downey studios, Elon Musk, hawthorne, jack o'halloran, Long Beach, Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, Long Beach Studios, Mayor Bob Foster, nasa, Southern California, Tesla, The District Weekly