County’s Image Clouds Goal of High-Tech Area

Orange County’s otherwise bright future as a high-technology center is clouded by transportation problems and its opulent image, according to a group of academic, business and development specialists who gathered Friday in Irvine to speculate on the future of that city and the county as a whole.

With industrial parks in Irvine, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa providing the core, Orange County already hosts one of the nation’s largest concentrations of high-technology businesses and is a national leader in electronics development and some areas of medical research, according to Irvine Co. President Thomas Nielsen.

Nielsen, whose company is developing a major high-technology research and development center in Irvine, joined with Jack Peltason, the new chancellor at UC Irvine, in presenting a view of the area’s future. They said that growing research and development cooperation between the university and private industry in science, medicine, engineering and electronics will serve as a magnet to attract major high-tech businesses to the county.

Leonard Mackenzie, chairman of General Automation Inc. of Anaheim, agreed that the county has numerous attractions for business--climate, large pool of skilled labor and talented management, and a nationally renowned research university--that make it one of the best locations in the world for high-tech businesses. But, he said, those features won’t lure business unless they are made known, and, Mackenzie said, local business and political leaders so far have done a poor job of selling the county.

“People think it’s part of Los Angeles,” he told the audience of nearly 250.

Other hurdles to business development were the county’s “deplorable” surface transportation and its airport, MacKenzie said. He warned that a “major crisis” could develop unless traffic congestion is relieved within the next five years, and said the county needs an international airport rather than the “regional jumping-off runways” at John Wayne Airport.

In addition, Mackenzie said the county has been a victim of its own “gossip about high living costs” and housing shortages. He laid part of the blame at the doorstep of county-based newspapers, saying they “love to put in things about the rich areas, but (never write) about the real Orange County.”

Such stories, whether printed in newspapers or repeated at conventions and business meetings, make it difficult to recruit out-of-area employees or to persuade businesses to locate within the county, Mackenzie said.

Although numerous studies have shown that Orange County housing costs are among the highest in the nation, MacKenzie said that living costs overall are no higher than in other urban and suburban high-technology centers, he said.

“We have to quit joking about it. It is not true that people cannot afford to live here.”