Small Business Center Goes Out of Business : Commerce: Some bemoan closure of Santa Clarita Valley facility that offered workshops and advice, but critics say it was ineffective.

The Santa Clarita Valley Small Business Center, whose mission was to provide training, information and technical assistance to local merchants, will shut its doors Thursday for the same reason that has plagued many of its clients: no money.

“It’s the swan song of a great experiment,” said Bob Hawkes, the center’s executive director for the last three years.

Hawkes and other advocates say Santa Clarita is losing a valuable resource that provided impartial expertise that is unavailable elsewhere. But critics, including the Santa Clarita city councilwoman who fought for its creation, say the $200,000 investment of public and private funds appears to have been wasted.

“I don’t think it did what it was supposed to do,” said Councilwoman Jan Heidt. “I don’t know of one small business it helped.”

The business center was established in late 1991 to help local merchants cope with the pending arrival of the Valencia Town Center, Santa Clarita’s first regional mall, which hosts three department stores and has space for 110 retail shops.

Funding for the center came from a $100,000 donation from the mall’s developer--which Heidt requested as a condition of approving the project in 1988--and a matching amount from the city. Its office space on the College of the Canyons campus was donated by the community college.

The center had a two-person, part-time staff and arranged periodic workshops on topics such as developing business plans and improving sales techniques. The staff saw 30 to 35 new clients per month and handled about 10 calls a day, Hawkes said.

The strength of the center, Hawkes said, was its impartiality.

“You go to a paid consultant and there’s a tendency for them to tell you what you want to hear,” said Hawkes, who helped run a similar center in Bakersfield and taught college-level business there. “What we tried to do was give them absolutely objective advice. Honestly, sometimes their ideas weren’t red hot.”

The Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce and the city’s economic development department referred hopeful entrepreneurs to the center.

“Clearly, there was a steady trickle of calls,” said Mike Haviland, the city’s economic development coordinator. “The city got a lot out of that investment.”

Not everyone agrees.

“It started out with the right intent,” said a disappointed Heidt, who owns a small bookstore in Santa Clarita. “But who did they help?”

Heidt said the center provided no information that couldn’t be found through the chamber. And after four years, most people were still unaware of the center or its services, she said.

“Some of us [business owners] needed to be advised what was available to us,” Heidt said. “It was a black hole that the money went into.”

Santa Clarita merchants will soon need more help than ever. Chain stores continue to spring up, and the Valencia Marketplace, a “power center” with 800,000 square feet of retail space and confirmed Wal-Mart, Circuit City and Toys R Us outlets, is slated to open west of the city late next year.

Gary Johnson, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce and a former board member of the small-business center, said the chamber will try to pick up where the center leaves off.

The chamber has gathered $15,000 worth of donations to launch its own small-business center, which for now will operate out of the chamber’s regular office, Johnson said. Informational workshops won’t be available until next year, and Johnson hopes the chamber group can do a better job of marketing its services.

“We’re not really going to allow it to [disappear],” Johnson said. “It does need to be in existence.”