Welcome Reversal: Oregon Firm Moving to Santa Ana : Relocation: Amid talk of a business exodus from state, computer company arrives with plans to hire 550.
In the midst of a statewide debate about business flight from California, an Oregon computer-services company said Friday that it will move its headquarters to Santa Ana and plans to hire 550 people in Orange County within a year.
Advanced Data Concepts Inc. will relocate from Portland in the hope of landing state and federal government contracts in Southern California, with its many military installations, said Frank E. Rivera Sr., chairman and chief executive.
The company also thinks that by moving to Southern California it will be better positioned to seek opportunities in Mexico that arise from the North American Free Trade Agreement, Rivera said.
“We got no assurance, no tax breaks or any incentive from the local or state governments of California,” Rivera said during an interview Friday from his Portland office.
The relocation comes as business interests have complained that the state has lost its competitiveness because of overregulation, high labor and workers’ compensation costs and other problems. Adjacent states have tried to lure Southern California companies, but there is little evidence of a widespread exodus so far.
Rivera said he is not concerned by state regulations or other problems that have led companies to consider moving from California.
“I think the economic climate of Oregon and California is about the same,” he said. “I don’t see why companies are leaving California. Maybe they don’t realize that they have a gold mine in their back yard.”
Gov. Pete Wilson, who is pushing initiatives designed to improve business competitiveness, said he hopes other out-of-state firms will follow the lead of Advanced Data Concepts. He said the free-trade agreement would help the state and its businesses.
“The free-trade agreement will open up a host of opportunities in California for businesses like Advanced Data Concepts, opportunities that will translate into jobs for Californians,” Wilson said in a statement.
Rivera said that much of the credit for his decision should go to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s office in Santa Ana. The SBA office helped his company, which already has a small operation here, to secure several contracts.
Advanced Data provides safeguard and security systems, including data processing. Its customers include some facilities of the U.S. departments of Energy, Defense and Agriculture, the Postal Service and the Air Force. For example, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory government testing facility in Alameda, the company tracks the movement of nuclear material.
Advanced Data is among the the nation’s 200 largest Latino-owned businesses and is Oregon’s largest minority contractor. It has customers in Oregon, California, Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, Nebraska and the District of Columbia.
The company, which had 1991 revenue of $12.7 million, is designated as a disadvantaged firm under the SBA’s Section 8(a) program, which entitles it to bid for federal contracts. However, Rivera said he expects Advanced Data to graduate from that federal program at year’s end because its annual revenue will reach about $22 million, above the limit for Section 8(a).
Rivera said it will take at least a year to move the bulk of Advance Data’s operations to Santa Ana. By then, he said, he will have found an Orange County site for a corporate headquarters. The company’s 450 employees in Portland will be laid off gradually, he said, rather than relocated.
Rivera’s son Jim, who is president of the company, is already working out of a four-room Santa Ana office. The company plans to begin hiring from there within four months. Positions will include security specialists, computer programmers and program analysts, telecommunications specialists, electronics engineers and other computer specialists.
Economists and business leaders in Orange County said Friday that the company’s relocation will boost not only the economy but morale as well.
“I would say this is a very positive note,” said Esmael Adibi, director of the Center for Economic Research at Chapman University in Orange.
“The question is not the 500 jobs. The most important factor is the psychology of firms leaving California,” he said. Advanced Data’s move, he said, may help to enhance the area’s image.
Lynn Reaser, economist for First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles, noted that there has been a trickle of business into California recently. Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Walmart Co., for example, have both announced plans to build huge regional warehouses in the San Joaquin Valley.
“Even though we hear about companies leaving, there are cases of companies coming and realizing California is an extremely large market,” she said. “Other states are not necessarily the nirvana they appear to be.”
Richard Luehrs, past president of the Federated Chambers of Commerce of Orange County, said Advanced Data’s relocation validates the chambers’ long-held belief that “Orange County is a special place.”
