Complex Opens to Help Green Companies Grow : Business: ‘Cluster’ facility hopes to get environmental entrepreneurs on their feet so they can bring in new jobs.

Phil Lee rummaged through a pocketful of business cards.

Around him, men and women in suits and name tags wandered the halls of the Thousand Oaks Environmental Business Cluster, poking their heads into offices like Lee’s.

The cluster--a nonprofit effort to encourage new, environmentally friendly businesses--was holding its grand opening ceremony Wednesday, and tenants like Lee were taking the opportunity to troll the crowd for new contacts.

The exposure to like-minded entrepreneurs and potential contacts had already helped Lee, whose DuraLee Products moved into the building on Lombard Street in August. Another cluster tenant recently helped him pitch his product--a large, collapsible storage bin made of recycled plastic--to 20th Century Fox movie studio. He hopes for an order, perhaps 100 or 150 units, soon.

“In 90 days, I’ve already made two or three great contacts,” he said. “You can’t do better than that.”

That’s what city and business leaders had in mind when they started the cluster, one of only two such incubators for environmental companies in the nation. But as about 100 local business and government officials gathered Wednesday for a ribbon-cutting and tour of the facility, organizers said they are still looking for more community support.

Convincing companies to contribute has been difficult, said Steve Wright, special projects manager for chief sponsor GTE. The cluster idea is still new and novel enough that few potential sponsors understand it at first.

“We didn’t realize how much we needed to educate everyone on what an incubator was,” he told the crowd Wednesday. “We took a lot of people to lunch. We gave a lot of tours. I gained about 15 pounds.”

The sponsors’ donations--of money, equipment, even furniture--have created a center where start-up firms can find cheap office space, free access to the Internet and sophisticated communications equipment, including a video teleconference system. Once selected to join the cluster, tenants can stay for two years, then must move out to make way for others.

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The idea, Director Yu-Yue Widrig said, is to help new businesses grow to the point where they can stand on their own and bring new jobs to the area.

“The bottom line is, do they create jobs for the community?” she said. “We don’t want to just subsidize anyone.”

So far, nine businesses have moved into the cluster, known by its acronym, TOEBC. They have spent the past weeks and months learning to use the new facility--and each other, trading ideas and contacts over the cubicle walls.

Lee’s presentation to the movie studio, which may use the bins to store old scripts or move large plants around movie sets, went easier with cluster tenant Yvette Berke there to help. Berke, president of Adapt Consulting, already knew people at the studio.

“There you go, synergy between two TOEBC people,” Lee said. “I wouldn’t have met Yvette without this.”

Berke’s business, which helps other companies reduce the amount of waste they generate and use more recycled products, also brought her into contact with another tenant, Green Suites International, before it moved in.

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Green Suites, which markets environmentally sensitive products to hotels, has worked with cluster tenant Eliminex, a pest-control service using products that do not damage the environment.

And EcoTelesis, a nonprofit firm helping the Chinese government build paper recycling plants, is using the programming services of another tenant, VR-One, which helps businesses do most of their office work on computers instead of paper.

If the companies have been quick to tap each other as resources, they have been slower to warm to the cluster’s advanced technologies. Berke has used the Internet to advertise her services, but Lee hasn’t. And most have yet to try the video teleconferencing equipment, which lets users see each other on a computer screen as they talk.

Dan Bornholdt, Green Suites’ president, said his firm has three upcoming presentations to hotel chains. “None of those multibillion-dollar companies have that teleconferencing equipment,” he said. “So it’s still a little ahead of its time.”