New GTE Center in Oxnard to Add 650 Jobs : Business: Decision by the Thousand Oaks-based phone company helps offset the city’s recent plant closures.

GTE California announced Thursday that it will establish a customer service center in Oxnard, a move that will bring 650 jobs to a city reeling from a spate of plant closures and job losses in recent years.

By September, the Thousand Oaks-based telephone company is scheduled to be open for business at a never-used office building at Rice Avenue and Gonzales Road, GTE spokesman Mike Raydo said.

GTE chose Oxnard because it is near the company’s Thousand Oaks headquarters and because local officials aggressively recruited the firm.

“We looked at several locations, but Oxnard has been very proactive and very good as far as helping us through the process,” Raydo said. “We’re happy to be staying in Ventura County. There’s a good work force here that we can draw from and educate.”

GTE will transfer 250 of its employees to the new center and hire 400 new workers to staff the facility, which will consolidate work done at GTE offices throughout Southern California.

Although there will be no layoffs as a result of the consolidation, nine service centers will be closed, including facilities in Camarillo and Newbury Park. The 1,300 employees at those centers will be offered jobs elsewhere.

The new Oxnard center, which will be housed in the 115,000-square-foot Chevron USA building in the city’s northeast area, will schedule service calls for repairs and handle customer billing questions and other inquiries.

Oxnard officials see GTE’s decision as the product of prolonged efforts to lure new business to the city as a way of boosting the local economic base.

They say the center couldn’t have come at a better time. Oxnard is choked by double-digit unemployment and has lost an estimated 2,000 jobs in the past five years. And in 1992, Abex Aerospace, one of the city’s largest employers, decided to shut down its Oxnard plant and lay off more than 500 workers.

“Losing Abex was a big blow but I think that this is going to offset a lot of that,” Councilman Mike Pliksy said. “This is a major conquest, and I think GTE now will become the nucleus for a lot of other activity in the area.”

Added Councilman Tom Holden: “This kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. We have worked hard to show that Oxnard is a business-friendly place.”

GTE had been torn between setting up its service center in Oxnard and a competing site in San Bernardino County.

But company officials said they were swayed by a groundswell of community support in Oxnard. A full-page advertisement, sponsored by the Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp., ran in a local newspaper, urging GTE to come to Oxnard.

The Oxnard Chamber of Commerce contacted GTE to answer questions about the community and offer other kinds of assistance.

“Ventura County has some natural attractions to it,” said Marc Charney, president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. “But I also think a good message has been sent out over the past several months. We’ve extended our hospitality to new businesses.”

In addition to boosting the local economy, city officials and economic development advocates say GTE’s move will have other advantages. GTE will bring hundreds of clerical and other semi-skilled jobs to the area that pay between $10 and $15 an hour.

Those workers will spend money and pay taxes in the county, further stimulating the economy.

Of equal significance is that GTE will lease a $15-million office building constructed in 1990 by Chevron USA but never occupied. Chevron had planned to base its Southern California regional headquarters in the three-story building, but later decided to move most of its offices to Bakersfield.

Oxnard officials say now that GTE has been landed, they can start to work on attracting other businesses to the area.

“We needed this very badly,” said Steve Kinney, president of the Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp.

“Obviously we would have survived if it hadn’t happened, but we needed to turn the corner and start regaining those jobs that we had lost,” he said. “This is a good and very substantial first step, but it’s just a first step.”