Decision to Spare Point Mugu Buoys Business : Economy: A surge in activity is already replacing fears of lost jobs and revenues, leasing agents, realtors and merchants report.
Ventura County’s stalled economy began to shake off its jitters Friday after the successful fight to prevent closure of the Point Mugu naval base.
In the 24 hours following Thursday’s decision by a federal commission to keep the county’s largest employer open, local business people were already feeling the effects.
“It’s changed the market,” said Eric Boularis, an industrial leasing agent at Grubb & Ellis in Oxnard. “Now that this is behind us, people say they are comfortable with making decisions. I’m already speaking with some of them, and they say they’re ready to move forward.”
Boularis said he knows of eight or 10 deals in his office that were stalled partly because of the uncertainties of Point Mugu.
Even though he sells and leases buildings in Ventura--not the communities closest to the base--Boularis said he personally has several deals he expects to be influenced by Thursday’s vote by a federal base-closure commission to spare the 9,000-employee weapons station.
The decision’s impact was also felt immediately at residential real estate offices across the Oxnard Plain.
“Since the news broke yesterday, we’ve gotten a lot of calls,” said Catherine Welch, a partner at Patterson & Tintorri in Oxnard. “They’re saying that they’re more open to making decisions now. They’re back in the market.”
Business owners in Oxnard, Camarillo and Port Hueneme said the base’s salvation made their week.
“We think the future is a lot more rosy today than it was yesterday, no question,” said Mike Penrod of Parkstone Co., part owner of the Home Base store in Oxnard and construction manager at a new Target store planned in Camarillo.
Carolyn Leavens, president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., said she could virtually hear the sighs of relief from small and large businesses around the county.
“The shoe shops, the realtors, the dry cleaners, the restaurants--I think everybody became aware that their jobs and their businesses were on the line just as much as Point Mugu was,” she said.
A task force formed to save the base estimated that closure would have cost the county 18,000 jobs, 19,000 residents, $600 million in annual income and $1.3 billion in local sales each year.
The local housing market would have been flooded by an additional 3,600 homes for sale because of the displacement of about 7,000 base workers outside the county, according to the task force.
But with the giant base still in business--and a stream of federal dollars rippling through the local economy--promoters are instantly in better shape to sell the county to high-tech, high-wage firms, Leavens said.
“We have been waiting for this so we can paint a really honest picture of Ventura County,” she said. “Now we don’t have to say, ‘The economy is flat on its back, and it’s a good time to buy.’ Instead, we can say, ‘You’re buying into an economy that’s up and running and ready to bark back.’ ”
Analyst Mark Schneipp said Ventura County’s business climate has been recovering nicely, even with the threat of Point Mugu’s closure. The county has thousands of more jobs than it did a year ago, retail sales are way up, vacancies in industrial and office buildings are down and even a recent collapse of housing sales follows a broad regional trend.
“I don’t believe being on the hit list [of base closures] for three months or the threat of being on the hit list for 12 months has had a real discernible effect on behavior in Ventura County,” said Schneipp, director of the Economic Forecast Project at UC Santa Barbara.
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In general, Ventura County has outperformed the region, he said. “It is one of the counties leading the economic recovery in Southern California,” he said.
Nowhere was there more exuberance about the future Friday than at about 100 private companies where thousands of workers depend on Point Mugu for their livelihood.
“LOGIC PREVAILS,” was the computer message Tom Davidson flashed to Computer Sciences Corp. superiors around the country after Point Mugu survived Thursday’s cuts.
“This means that all 200 jobs stay here,” said Davidson, director of the defense contractor’s Camarillo office, where 180 employees would have had to pack up and follow their work to a new base.
“Now we can stop worrying about whether we are going to have to relocate and concentrate on doing our jobs,” he said.
On a personal level, Davidson, 52, said he is no longer fretting about selling his home in a rock-bottom market. “Now I can think about staying around and retiring here after all.”
Along with other local defense contractors, Davidson was even talking Friday about modest job growth at Point Mugu as duties at bases that will be closed are moved here.
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“We’re optimistic that we’ll see some growth at Mugu,” he said, projecting about 8% a year for two years. “I think we’ve bottomed out from a defense standpoint, and now we’ll be adding to our population from some of those closed bases.” In Camarillo, where thousands of residents work at Point Mugu, City Manager William Little said he expects a renewed customer confidence to dramatically help developers who have recently built a string of new movie theaters and shopping centers.
“It will have a direct effect on retail sales, and real estate sales, and other activities that have been put on hold,” Little said.
“I think maybe 50% have been sitting on the sidelines when considering major purchases,” he said. “If we get those 50% back in the market, we’ll be in a good position.”
Don Facciano, executive director at the Oxnard chamber of commerce, said he could almost feel the collective community relief following the Mugu decision.
“People have been waiting for the shoe to drop,” he said. “Well, the shoe didn’t drop, so now we can go forward with our lives.” Back in his Ventura County district Friday, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he found residents almost giddy from the base-closure decision.
“Truly, this is like the county won the biggest lottery in history, when you consider the impact on the economy,” Gallegly said. “If it had gone the other way, it could have been like Black Friday.”
