Special Report: Moving to the Valley : BURBANK : Businessman Calls the Area ‘Strategic’

In 1982, Angel Dayan fled the Philippines to escape the harsh government and a poor economy for a better life in the United States.

Almost 12 years later he would flee the mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles for a better life in Burbank.

“I thought I’d take my chances here,” said the 46-year-old accountant, who moved his business to Burbank in September.

Crime and Metro Rail, Dayan said, drove him from Los Angeles. His clients’ cars were constantly being broken into and construction of the new rail line down Wilshire Boulevard made it difficult for clients to see him.

He misses the Filipino restaurants and community in his old neighborhood. But Burbank, he says, has better parking, less crime and at his storefront office on the corner of Angeleno Avenue and San Fernando Road, the rent is half what it was in L.A.

“I think Burbank is a pretty strategic area,” Dayan said. “I think Burbank is becoming a business center, getting a spillover from Los Angeles because of the riots.”

Dayan said many of his former clients have followed him to his new location.

Dayan would like to live in Burbank, but the current depressed real estate market has made that difficult. He has lived in Van Nuys for the past four years, after moving his home from the mid-Wilshire area as well.

He enjoys the growing ethnic diversity of the Valley, but at the same time likes the conservatism he has found in Burbank, even a law that prohibited banners for new businesses. That law has been repealed since he opened his office.

“In Los Angeles, traffic cops are busy citing traffic violators and enforcing those laws every day,” Dayan said. “In Burbank, they don’t do that, the parking enforcement is pretty liberal and you don’t have to worry about crime.”

In a few years, after Metro Rail construction is finished, Dayan said he might move his business back to the mid-Wilshire area, but he would never move his home back over the hill.

“You don’t get to rest in Los Angeles on the weekends,” Dayan said. “It’s too noisy.”