El Segundo Weathers, Welcomes Changes
They got their first McDonald’s, but three days after it opened last week to a full parking lot and long lines at the drive-through window, El Segundo officials learned that one of the town’s major employers was cutting back, vacating several major buildings and eliminating about 1,100 local jobs.
Those two events say much about the changes underway in this oceanside city of 16,000.
A Raytheon Co. official called Mayor Sandra Jacobs with the news Friday, shortly before the Massachusetts-based aerospace giant announced that it was eliminating 8,700 jobs nationwide and consolidating operations.
The brunt of the cuts are to come in Southern California--especially at the former El Segundo enclave of Hughes Aircraft, which Raytheon acquired last year.
“Any time you hear ‘layoffs,’ you are certainly disappointed,” Jacobs said Saturday in recalling her initial reaction to the news. “That has an impact not only on city revenues but also on the lives of the people who live here.”
But Jacobs said she quickly realized that the news was not all bad. Raytheon plans to make El Segundo the headquarters for its sensors and electronic systems segment, bringing some jobs from facilities it will close in nearby Torrance and Westchester to offset some of the town’s losses.
It will be two years before all the layoffs take effect, and the positions that remain will be high-paying ones, the mayor said.
“Certainly, they still want to be in our city, and that is encouraging,” Jacobs said.
Moreover, she added, the jobs loss will be mitigated somewhat by the city’s recent efforts to broaden its economic base. El Segundo has brought in a wide range of new businesses, a move begun earlier in the decade when the aerospace industry experienced sharp cut backs that reverberated through-out Southern California.
The city has successfully recruited new retail stores and restaurants along the booming Sepulveda Boulevard commercial corridor adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport.
It has a new business park there, and a hotel is under construction. Shortly before McDonald’s opened, an upscale seafood chain, McCormick & Schmick’s, opened its doors at the south end of town.
“We have four-star fish and now four-star hamburgers,” Jacobs said.
But the city’s quaint and sleepy downtown district, to the west of bustling Sepulveda, has yet to share in the boom. And for some residents, at least, that is just fine.
“It has a very hometown, kind of old-fashioned feeling to it,” said Margaret Wolfe, owner of a doll shop there.
“It’s really unlike any other town in the L.A. area.”
Claude Gordon, who has lived in El Segundo for more than 20 years, said, “It’s a safe place, a quiet place. No one really much knows that it’s here.”
But locals and city officials seem split on whether or not the relative obscurity is a good thing. Downtown may be steeped in charm, but it is plagued by empty storefronts and low foot traffic.
“This is one of the best towns going, but recently, maybe because of aerospace, there don’t seem to be many people on the streets,” said resident Danielle Scott as she emerged from a florist shop Saturday and surveyed the quiet street in front of her.
“Stores keep opening up here, but they’ll close again a year or two later.”
But what is happening a mile inland--where Sepulveda teems with patrons of the recent additions, including a Ralphs supermarket and a Starbucks coffeehouse--doesn’t much please Scott either. “It’s starting to look just like the Valley,” she said.
Gordon tended to agree.
“A lot of people don’t like what’s going on with the franchises moving in on Sepulveda. It doesn’t match up real well with the small-town feeling,” he said.
Although El Segundo residents may have strong and varied opinions about the reshaping of their town, the Raytheon announcement was met more with a shrug than dismay.
Beverly Foster, a 16-year El Segundo resident and a former Hughes Aircraft employee, said that, like her family, the city has been weaning itself from aerospace.
” I used to work at Hughes, and so did my husband,” she said. “We both got out in the late ‘80s, but we found other work here. This town can cope.”
