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But Google moved Titan’s operations to California this summer, prompting New Mexico to impose clawback provisions to recover the state’s money, Economic Development Secretary Jon Barela said.

“I’m happy to report that Google has made the payment,” Barela told the Journal on Wednesday. “It deposited just over $995,000, which cleared on Monday.”

Barela said the repayment shows the clawback system works and demonstrates Google’s commitment to fulfilling its obligations.

“Google is a great company, and they did the right thing,” Barela said. “We continue to have good relations with them.”

Google still owns the $15 million building it constructed at the airport, but the city owns the property on which it is located. It’s not clear what Google will do with the building, but the company has paid a full year of rent for the city property, Moriarty Mayor Ted Hart said.

“The company also owns a piece of property north of town where they did some testing on their drone,” Hart said. “They’ve paid rent on that property for another year, as well, so Google is still doing things here, but we don’t know what because the company is very quiet.”

However, all of the 40-plus people who were employed at Titan have either relocated to California or moved on to other things, Hart said.

The city has asked Google to either rent out its building or sell it to the city.

“We don’t like empty buildings in town,” Hart said. “The city could acquire it, but we don’t want to use tax dollars for that, because we’d have to maintain it and spend money on other things.”

One potential tenant has appeared for at least a portion of the building. Silent Falcon, which also makes solar-powered drones at a 5,000-square-foot facility in Albuquerque’s Southeast Heights, is interested in renting up to 15,000 square feet at Google’s facility, said company CEO John Brown.

“We’ve met with the mayor, airport authorities and local and state economic development officials, but there’s nothing firm yet,” Brown told the Journal . “We’re running out of space at our current facility, and we’d like to bring some things that we’ve farmed out to local machine and fabrication shops back in-house.”

Still, even if Silent Falcon passes on the building, with the grant repayment now in the bank, the state is in a better position than before Google arrived in New Mexico to attract more companies to the municipal airport, Barela said.

“The infrastructure is there and ready for future job creation,” he said. “There’s nothing lost.”