All told, the site chosen for the Solyndra facility was perhaps one of the most expensive pieces of land in the country, and certainly one of the most burdensome locations to operate a business. Bilbray points out that these are exactly the sorts of considerations most investors take into account before financing a new facility. It would have been within the DOE’s authority to attach conditions to a loan guarantee — for example, by insisting that the beneficiary move to a more favorable location. When Bilbray asked Silver at the hearing whether the DOE ever questioned this aspect of Solyndra’s loan application, Silver replied that while he wasn’t at DOE at the time the loan was approved (a convenient and oft-repeated out), Solyndra’s investors and management team “must have concluded that it was the right place to do it.”

But putting all that aside, Bilbray is astonished that no one appears to have second-guessed the decision to build a new facility in the first place, which he calls “absurd.” With the number of Bay-Area start-ups constantly in flux, and with businesses “fleeing the state” in search of more favorable economic conditions, there is no shortage of facilities available to be rented or retrofitted to accommodate even high-tech companies like Solyndra.