Small Firm Threatens to Move, Cites Airport Size

A Camarillo telecommunications firm is considering moving its operations from Ventura County because company officials said they are finding it too hard to stay competitive in a region lacking a full-service airport.

Officials at ACT Networks said they could relocate to another site in the county or to somewhere in the Los Angeles area as early as this summer.

“Our biggest issue here is that we don’t have an airport and that’s made it too hard to run a $60-million-a-year business,” said Andre de Fusco, company president and chief executive officer. “It’s too much to ask a client to fly into LAX and then find their way up here.”

ACT Networks has been in Camarillo since 1994 when the company moved from Simi Valley.

The company, which produces specialized communications equipment, employs more than 230 people worldwide with about 130 at the Camarillo headquarters. Company officials said they don’t expect the move to result in layoffs.

However, losing a business as large as ACT is going to smart, said Penny Bohanon, president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. It should open people’s eyes to the kinds of improvements the county will need, she said, if it hopes to remain business-friendly.

“It’s already a real stretch for some companies to stay up here without [an airport] especially if they’re doing a lot of international and national business, which many of them are,” she said. “Without a civilian airport I think we will see more of this kind of thing happening.”

Camarillo City Manager Bill Little said a decision to move would be unfortunate.

City officials had spoken with ACT about ways to accommodate its changing needs, even going so far as to offer bond-free financing and assistance in locating another property.

“We offered up what we could, but we couldn’t build them an airport,” Little said.

In addition to the airport issue, de Fusco said the company has run into a number of stumbling blocks as business has increased over the years.

With acquisitions and consolidations, which have spread the company’s operations and employees to a number of locations over the past several years, the company said its 63,000-square-foot building on Camino Ruiz is too roomy.

The company would like to move to a smaller, more consolidated facility.

As a high-technology manufacturer, the publicly-traded ACT Networks has an extensive list of foreign clients, most of them in Asia.

To increase its profile overseas, the company recently opened an office in Beijing.

However, without an airport conveniently located for business travelers, de Fusco said it’s become too difficult to serve and court clients.

“Without an airport, [Camarillo] is just too far,” he said. “And there’s no other options.”

This is not the first time that a company has opted to look elsewhere because of the airport problem.

A few years ago, BMW Motors had talked of starting a training facility in the Oxnard area, but without a regional airport available to ferry personnel the company decided to look elsewhere.

It later located to Ontario, not far from that city’s airport.

Talk of a full-service airport has been bandied about for years with little or no progress.

In 1994, talks between the county and military about sharing an airstrip at the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station began, but have all but ended with no agreements reached.

Other airports like those in Camarillo and Oxnard are too small for the type of redesign needed to make them useful to large airlines.

The Oxnard Airport, however, does have commuter flights to Los Angeles International Airport.

Whether the company leaves the county or moves to another location within it is not yet firm, but accessibility is the overriding issue.

“For a business like this, [not having an airport] is just not working,” de Fusco said. “That’s the biggest obstacle to our doing business here.”