Rescue Plans for Local Economy Target Existing Talent : Business: One program will help entrepreneurs find start-up capital, meet regulations and get the technical expertise needed for new manufacturing.

Grim. Miserable. Dire. No matter how they describe it, experts trying to figure out how to revive the South Bay’s flagging economy agree on one point: It’s in bad shape and faces a long road to recovery.

There have been numerous economic summits in recent weeks, and at most of them small-business owners, manufacturers, economists and marketing consultants have painted a grim picture of disappearing jobs, shrinking tax bases, vacant offices and plummeting home prices.

Rescue plans are numerous but largely uncoordinated. One consultant is urging the area’s business community to create a new identity for itself--as Silicon Valley did--by promoting itself as the Transportation South Bay, a research and production hub for everything from electric cars to magnetic-levitation trains.

Others scoff at the idea of shifting dependence to a single new industry, warning that the South Bay’s reliance on defense and aerospace is what brought it to its current straits.

But the plans are there, and legislators say they are listening and learning.

“We’re in pretty miserable shape,” said Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Torrance), who staged a six-hour summit in Torrance last week. “Even if we do everything right, it’s still going to be a difficult and painful period, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying.”

First on the list, experts agree, must be programs to ensure that the South Bay does not lose the technological talent that has gathered here.

More than 80,000 technology jobs have disappeared from Los Angeles County since 1989, according to Robert Swayze, a county Community Development Commission spokesman who appeared at Bowen’s meeting. As many as 184,000 more jobs could be lost by 2001.

“We’re talking about talent, and what’s happening is that this huge resource is just melting away,” Swayze said. “For years, this area was fat, dumb and happy with aerospace just chugging along, and now we’ve got to think and work harder to get the money to keep the jobs and the talent here.”

Using a federal Economic Development Administration grant of $5 million, Swayze’s agency has developed a multistage program to try to make that possible.

“Lord knows, when you think about $2 billion or $3 billion (in defense contracts), $5 million doesn’t begin to replace it,” he acknowledged. “But we can use it to encourage other types of private investment.”

The idea, he said, is to help small businesses figure out government regulations, find start-up capital and get the technical expertise they need to bring a new product to market.

If all parts of the program can be funded, an unemployed aerospace worker with a great idea would be able to get seed capital and enter a “technology incubator” offering low rent and shared technical services to develop the product, followed by a bigger loan for initial manufacturing costs and placement in an enterprise zone for tax incentives.

Throughout the process, low-cost technical advice would be available to guide everything from the creation of a marketing plan to the placement of components on the assembly line.

The $33-million center that will provide that advice, one of only seven in the nation, will open its doors this April in Hawthorne.

Called the California Manufacturing Technologies Center, the agency will coordinate with El Camino College and six other community colleges throughout the state to provide employee retraining and technical expertise, executive director John Chernesky said.

Agency consultants will show existing businesses how technology can make their product and manufacturing processes better and guide start-up companies through the intricacies of creating a business.

“I think what we’re going to see is just a few monolithic giants left in the aerospace and defense industry . . . who will pick their subcontractors based on technical advances,” Chernesky said. “Our mission is sort of like Darwinism, survival of the fittest. We’re going to ensure that the small and medium-sized manufacturer in California is smart enough and quality enough to produce what these monolithic giants require.”

Bowen said she also will look for ways to help the smallest of companies--home-based businesses--make the difficult leap from no employees to one. It is from such seemingly small steps that thriving companies grow, she noted.

“It just doesn’t seem like a lot of people in government think about the difficulties of minimum payments on things and how much paperwork is required for a single, even part-time, employee,” she said. “But once we get people past that first hurdle, it’s much easier to go from one to two and three and four. . . . That’s how new jobs are created.”