Entertainment Draws Most Growth in Area

A business group charged with reviving the San Fernando Valley’s lagging economy says the entertainment industry is the most promising for job growth in coming years.

The Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, a coalition of business and government leaders, says more people in the Valley now work in the movie industry than in defense or aerospace--a sharp contrast to five years ago. The Valley’s entertainment industry overall grew 60% in terms of jobs between 1987 and 1992, and employed more than 50,000 people in 1992, according to a recent survey conducted by the group.

According to U. S. Census data, including the Burbank and Universal City areas, nearly 38,000 people worked in motion picture jobs in 1992, while only about 18,000 worked in defense- and aerospace-related fields. However, manufacturing is still the cornerstone of the Valley’s economy, employing more than 100,000 people in the production of textiles, machinery, food products, computers, and various wood and metal products, the alliance said.

“Aerospace is not the No. 1 industry anymore. Entertainment has replaced it,” said John Rooney, president of Valley Economic Development Center, a nonprofit group based in Van Nuys, which is a partner in the alliance.

The alliance, which is backed by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, is developing a master plan for economic redevelopment in the Valley. Its first step was to evaluate the Valley’s economic prospects using part of a $350,000 grant from the U. S. Department of Commerce. On Monday, it went public with some early conclusions based on its analysis of census data.

The findings echoed what many economists already suspected: that the entertainment business has replaced the defense industry as the quintessential Valley industry. And unlike defense, which saw more than 45% of its jobs disappear between 1987 and 1992, the entertainment industry--including amusement parks, radio and television--is poised for even more growth in the future, Rooney said.

The alliance based its conclusions on census data and a survey it conducted of more than 1,000 local business owners. The information was collected by SRI International, a nonprofit research group based in Menlo Park, and the purpose was to identify the Valley’s strongest industries so that future redevelopment efforts could be focused on them.

Since entertainment appears to be one of the area’s largest and fastest-growing industries, it makes sense to support it with public redevelopment dollars, said Paul Kradin, a publicist for the alliance. “We are saying . . . let’s not let Seattle or San Antonio lure these industries away,” he said.

Bud Ovrom, city manager of Burbank, knows about the defense-entertainment shift firsthand. “We’ve had the best and worst of both worlds,” he said. Burbank lost 10,000 aerospace jobs in recent years following the departure of Lockheed Corp. At the same time, the city gained thousands of jobs as the Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and other media companies went through major expansions.

Commercial real estate vacancy rates in Burbank’s Media District are running at about 2%, Ovrom said--good news for surrounding cities such as Glendale and Los Angeles, which may be poised to absorb some of the area’s future growth.

The alliance’s report confirms what many economists have long been said about the area, said Jack Kyser, of the L. A. County Economic Development Council, who was not involved in the study. But the effort will “help people get focused” on ways to help the local economy, he said. “They are asking all the right questions.”