Development Group Rolls Out New Package for Selling Oxnard
Real estate brokers, company officials and other people in a position to help relocate businesses to Oxnard soon will receive a nice little package from the Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp.
In that package will be a description of the Port of Hueneme, a list of the city’s major employers and a Business Investment Guide touting Oxnard’s geographic location, housing market, labor force and other factors that might sway a move to the city.
Distribution of this promotional kit, published last week, is the first step in the EDC’s concerted attempt to market Oxnard to business owners outside the county.
“The tide is rising in the whole Southern California economy, so companies that have long delayed in making major long-term decisions on expansion and relocation are thinking about it now,” said Steve Kinney, president of the EDC. “That is the kind of company we want to make sure is aware of the opportunities we have out here.”
The private, nonprofit EDC, originally run by the city of Oxnard, was formed four years ago to help draw companies to Oxnard and Port Hueneme and to retain businesses already there. Since its founding, the organization has helped create 4,200 jobs and $67 million in capital investment.
Only within the past year, with the hiring in June of a business development director, has the organization had the resources to go all out in a Los Angeles County marketing campaign.
“We have been so small the last three years we have just had our hands full with inquiries,” Kinney said. “Now we have the ability to take the initiative ourselves.”
If form holds true, Kinney said, it should not be hard to find business owners interested in the area.
“Over the course of the last two or three years, there’s been a regular pattern of companies, mostly located in the Los Angeles Basin or the San Fernando Valley, who contact us interested in the Oxnard Plain,” he said. “There’s clearly a receptive audience of prospective companies down in the Valley or Los Angeles looking to move out of that environment.”
A major focus of the marketing effort will be placed on the Pacific Commerce Center, 1,380 acres of developed and undeveloped land on the Oxnard Plain, bordered by Rose Avenue, 5th Street, Del Norte Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway.
Earlier this month, the area’s developers formally established a marketing alliance to better promote the area to light manufacturing, industrial, commercial and other businesses in and outside Ventura County.
The Pacific Commerce Center boundaries encompass Sakioka Farms, Phase II of the Shopping at the Rose center, the McInnes Ranch development, McGrath Industrial Park, the Haas Technology Center, the Oxnard Factory Outlet, the Sares Business Center, the Procter & Gamble plant and several business parks.
“The section was developed in the mid-1980s under a Master Plan for the whole area. It’s the largest Master Plan industrial park in Ventura County,” Kinney said. “We are trying to step up the absorption rate for the area. It was dormant for the first five years of the 1990s. Only within the last year have we seen noticeable activity out there.”
Haas Automation has nearly completed a 415,000-square-foot facility and is scheduled to occupy the building in January; the Sares-Regis Group, an Irvine-based property management company, has broken ground on the first of three buildings that will total 130,000 square feet, and Sunbelt Properties has begun developing two buildings of a combined 163,000 square feet.
“That’s more action than the area has seen in six or seven years,” Kinney said. “The market seems fertile now, but we still have to tend to it. That’s the intent of developing the marketing campaign, to take advantage now. Since it is nearly 1,400 acres, there is enough land to accommodate many different uses.”
As part of its campaign for the area, the developers even changed the name of their collective property. The area was originally designated as the Northeastern Industrial Assessment District. With the stepped-up campaign came the name Pacific Commerce Center.
“Businesses are going to make location decisions based on hard economics like land costs, labor force, cost of housing. Changing the name of the area is clearly not going to change those basic economics,” Kinney said. “But it can’t hurt to give a more appealing and attractive face to the area.”
Jim Mitchell of Caldwell/Mitchell Partners, an active developer in the Pacific Commerce Center region, said he anticipates continued growth in the area.
“There’s very little inventory and we have demand for the space both from businesses presently in the county and from businesses migrating from northern Los Angeles County,” said Mitchell, a partner in the development firm.
Caldwell/Mitchell has built 14 buildings in the Pacific Commerce Center, ranging from 6,000 to 10,000 square feet. The last two buildings were completed in September, with one yet to be filled. Mitchell said he anticipates developing another four buildings, from 10,000 to 15,000 square feet, in 1997.
“It’s a very significant business park,” Mitchell said. “There is nothing like this in scope in northern Los Angeles and Ventura counties, and that is where a lot of the businesses that are looking here are coming from.”
