Study Identifies Where the Jobs Are

Two of the county’s urban centers--the cities around John Wayne Airport and those in central Orange County--are the fastest-growing regional employment areas in California, according to a study released this week.

The area around John Wayne Airport--including Irvine, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach--tops the list of the state’s 26 urban centers, according to the study commissioned by the city of Anaheim. The airport area has 15 million square feet of occupied office space and the largest-grossing regional mall in the nation, South Coast Plaza.

But the economic development study predicts that the airport area will peak and begin to lose its market share in the next decade, clearing the way for the area of Anaheim, Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange to emerge as the county’s major business center.

Although the county’s booming economy is no secret, the area has surpassed Los Angeles and San Francisco in growth, which takes some getting used to, said Al McCord, city economic development director for Anaheim, which paid $30,000 to a private consulting firm, Robert Charles Lesser & Co. of Beverly Hills, to assess the city’s position for strategic economic planning.

“I don’t think we in Orange County have accepted ourselves as part of this economic dynamo,” McCord said. “We still want to see ourselves as an alternative to, not a part of, the L.A. basin.”

The study identified five county urban centers made up of cities that have a high concentration of businesses that serve a region or that produce goods or services sold outside the region: the airport area, central county, South County (Mission Viejo, Laguna Beach and Laguna Hills, among others), the western county (Huntington Beach and Westminster) and North County (Fullerton, Brea and La Habra).

These urban centers, also called urban cores, have businesses that have clustered in areas with good access to freeways and housing for both executives and workers.

Though South County has plenty of housing, it is unlikely to have business growth, because the area “can only draw employees from a 20% radius to the north, due to poor freeway access and being landlocked by mountains, Camp Pendleton and the ocean,” the study said.

North County has moderate industrial expansion and growth in office space, while the western county is the slowest-growing among the five urban centers.

So the economic development ball is in the court of the central county, and the cities in that area have about 10 years to take advantage of this situation, said Chris Leinberger, a managing partner of the company that wrote the study.

“The issue is how can you reap when the sun shines? And it’s going to be (shining) in the ‘90s,” Leinberger said.

After 10 years, transportation problems will probably worsen until the central county urban center will become less desirable, and a regional employment center will spring up in another area, said Julie Anderson, a research analyst for Robert Charles Lesser & Co.

The area most valuable to the central county is the so-called Platinum Triangle, where the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways converge, Leinberger said. Cities should assume the role of a developer when it comes to that area, Leinberger urged, managing growth in a way that benefits local areas.

“The cities need to recognize that the urban core is what’s driving their future growth and economic development,” Leinberger said.