Core Expansion

Already home to the world’s largest biotech company, Ventura County is on its way to becoming an increasingly important regional center for the nation’s fast-growing biotechnology industry.

And local leaders say the rapid growth in the number of biotech firms here brings with it economic and social benefits for the entire county.

Today, at least 27 biotech and biotech-related companies are doing business in the county, providing about 6,400 local jobs.

The largest of those firms is Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, the biggest biotech company in the world.

But the growing biotech industry that has sprung up around Amgen includes everything from two-man start-up firms to large manufacturers to consultants to distributors of equipment and supplies.

While these companies now provide only about 2% of the jobs countywide, that number is expected to steadily grow. Ten of the county’s new biotech companies started in the past three years.

Says Supervisor Frank Schillo, whose district encompasses the bulk of biotech business countywide: “That’s really impressive. You couldn’t have said that 10 years ago.”

Without Amgen, a majority of the county’s new biotech companies would not have located in Ventura County.

Some moved here to do business with Amgen. Others wanted to position themselves to lure away Amgen employees. And some of the newest start-up firms were actually founded by former Amgen employees with an entrepreneurial bent.

As some county leaders see it, the growth so far has created a kind of critical mass that could produce

even faster growth in coming years.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that number would double or triple in the next decade,” said Handel Evans, president of the planned Cal State Channel Islands campus in Camarillo, due to open in two years as the county’s first public four-year university.

“Biotechnology as a science is probably going to be one of the drivers of this new century,” Evans continued. “I think the next 10 to 20 years are going to be of earthquake proportions in the quality of our life. When I think of the growth of the biotechnology corridor on the 101 [Ventura Freeway], it’s not a question of whether or not it will happen, but of how fast.”

Growing Role Seen for Local Biotech Hub

Five years ago county economic development leaders identified biotechnology as an emerging area of economic opportunity for the county, whose growth could be driven by Amgen as well as the biotech industry throughout California.

The San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles regions are among the top six national centers for the 1,300 biotech companies now operating in the United States, according to an industry report issued last year.

While no county leader expects the fledgling Ventura County biotech hub to ever approach those areas, many believe the county could be an increasingly significant part of the state’s biotech network.

“We’re beginning to see a phenomenon,” Evans said. “There’s a core, like a spiral nebula, that’s spinning and spinning, spinning off other companies. It’s almost unstoppable. We have the center of that nebula here. It’s called Amgen. Then there’s the smaller companies. And it’s bound to keep going.”

Biotechnology is a wide field. One branch includes medical biotech research, the type of work Amgen performs. Another focuses on agriculture and such new areas of science as genetic engineering of crops.

One quality common to all the diverse types of biotech companies is that they are seen as clean alternatives to many declining industries, such as oil production. And that is one reason they appeal to politicians.

It is easier on the environment than smokestack industries, relatively recession-proof and pays well, said Bill Watkins, executive director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project.

Of special importance to the overall social fabric of any community, biotech employees are also usually well-educated. They tend to contribute to charitable organizations, volunteer in schools and participate in civic life.

“People like that do something good for the community,” Watkins said. “Individuals like that attract other individuals like that.”

Until now, biotech growth in Ventura County has had little to do with any organized efforts. Growth has been more of a simple market dynamic, with companies finding their way here first because of Amgen and then because of the suburban quality of life they quickly discover.

“Whether or not Ventura County was on the bandwagon, the bandwagon got here,” said Bruce Wallace, Amgen’s first staff employee and the man who actually picked Thousand Oaks as the company’s headquarters when it was formed in 1980.

“We’re here, other companies are here,” he said. “So they’re not starting from zero.”

While Schillo and others acknowledge county leaders have played only a small role so far in encouraging a biotech hub here, that may be changing.

In recent months two quasi-public groups have begun a more concerted effort to attract more biotech firms.

The Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County, in concert with cities throughout the county, is six months into a marketing campaign targeting Los Angeles biotech companies looking to relocate or expand.

The pitch: With its good schools, low crime rates, mountains, beaches, smaller population and family atmosphere, Ventura County beats Los Angeles as a place employees would want to live. Also, it’s still cheaper than big cities where biotech is now centered.

Meanwhile, VCBio, a networking group of industry representatives, has begun meeting monthly to discuss common needs of companies already here. Issues addressed include which suppliers should be in the county and what type of work force training is needed here. The group also has established a Web site.

There are clear limits to the future of biotech here, experts stress. The industry can grow only so much in a suburban county of 750,000 that has no major research university, a shortage of trained workers, slow-growth policies and a lack of affordable housing.

But even with those concerns, experts say this generally is a time for optimism and a continued push to expand the biotech core here.

Training programs at two community colleges already have been preparing workers for entry-level biotech jobs, and plans are under way to make the Cal State campus a magnet for training and research.

And the near-complete national effort to map the human genetic code holds the promise of an even bigger economic boom in the industry nationwide in coming years.

Boom Times Are Predicted for Industry

“It’s going to explode in the next five years,” said Richard Murawski, biotechnology vice president for Baxter International’s Hyland Immuno division, which has a manufacturing facility in Thousand Oaks.

“And Ventura County can get in on the ground floor,” he added. “We’re hoping people will realize this is a part of the country where we’re building biotech, where people all over the world could come if they want to do biotech.”

Joe McClure, executive director of the Economic Development Collaborative, is another optimist.

“We can certainly be a hub in Southern California,” he said, adding that the cluster of more than two dozen companies already here creates a sizable benefit to the economy and quality of life in the county.

Amgen alone pours millions of dollars into the local economy each year, through the nearly 4,400 people it employs in Thousand Oaks and its property taxes and numerous philanthropic contributions.

Amgen’s sales last year were $3 billion, three times more than the total value of the county’s agricultural production.

Not only is the company the county’s largest private employer, it’s the county’s top property taxpayer, with a tab of nearly $10 million a year for its main 120-acre campus--which supports 37 buildings, with four more under construction.

Biotech Pay Is Twice County Average

The company, which makes genetically engineered treatments for people with kidney disease, cancer and hepatitis-C, donates more than $1 million annually to philanthropic causes, largely in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

It also has donated money and equipment to create biotechnology training programs at two community colleges in the county, and holds an annual contest awarding $10,000 each to five Ventura County educators nominated for teaching excellence.

Biotech jobs in Ventura County pay twice the county’s average annual salary of $33,000, said Mark Schniepp, executive director of the California Economic Forecast Project.

While entry-level biotech manufacturing jobs can start at about $30,000, the average annual salary from biotech research, development and manufacturing countywide is $71,000. That average drops to $63,000 when biotech supply and support jobs also are taken into account, he said.

“We’re just seeing the beginning of this industry,” Schniepp said. “If Ventura County doesn’t do it, it’s going to happen elsewhere.”

Schniepp, however, is also among the experts who point out that obstacles limit just how much growth can occur here, and how quickly those obstacles can appear.

Aside from water and power concerns common to Southern California, Ventura County faces its own issues.

The county has no research university and an inadequately trained work force, a problem exacerbated by low unemployment rates. It also has a shortage of affordable housing and is not seen as any sort of cultural center by many of the scientists and academics biotech firms traditionally woo.

The lack of a research university in the county is the primary reason the biotech cluster around Amgen isn’t larger and is the primary challenge to recruiting new firms, said Doug Obenshain, a San Diego-based Ernst & Young consultant who finds venture capital for biotechnology companies.

“When you look at the areas that have really flourished in biotech, they’re areas with proximity to research organizations,” he said. “Many of the patents and ideas are developed by researchers in those institutions, and they decide it makes sense to commercialize their investments,” Obenshain said.

Boston has the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. San Diego has UC San Diego, the Scripps Research Institute and the Salk Institute. San Francisco has Stanford, UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. Los Angeles has UCLA, USC and Caltech. Orange County has UC Irvine. Amgen has affiliations with many of these universities and others throughout the world, and is opening an office in Cambridge, Mass., to have a presence in the Boston area near Harvard and M.I.T.

Jim Chamberlain, president of Camarillo-based BioSource International Inc., said a shortage of skilled, available workers here is also a problem for him.

“Amgen sucks everything up,” he said. “We get what we can, but there’s no big university system sitting right here. And this is far enough out that people from L.A. don’t want to commute out here. We still live with that stigma of being a very agricultural area.”

Despite the county’s strong agricultural base, there are also limits to biotech’s agricultural applications here for the immediate future, said Trevor Suslow, an extension specialist at UC Davis.

Genetically engineered research has focused on crops more likely to be profitable on a worldwide scale--such as soybeans, wheat and rice and not the strawberries, lemons and vegetables that comprise the heart of Ventura County’s farming base.

Three other concerns remain: The lack of a regional airport that connects to areas beyond L.A., restrictions on new businesses in the county and the lack of housing.

In recent years county voters have passed some of the strictest anti-growth policies in the nation. The SOAR campaign--Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources--was aimed at preventing sprawl and preserving quality of life. But it also makes it harder to build new manufacturing plants and could increase housing prices.

For now, SOAR’s overall crunch on industrial land is a perceived problem, not a reality, said Steve Kinney, president of the Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp. For instance, Oxnard alone has at least 700 available acres of vacant industrial land, including a patch of 450 contiguous acres--that is room for about six Amgens, or dozens of smaller companies.

But in Thousand Oaks, large land tracts are getting harder to find. When Amgen set out recently to build an additional manufacturing plant for its blockbuster drug Epogen, it looked not to Ventura County, but to Longmont, Colo., where land was cheaper and more plentiful and city leaders were eager to please.

For every problem, however, local leaders say there are potential solutions as well as counterpoints that build a case for locating in Ventura County.

One advantage cited by McClure of the Economic Development Collaborative in his recruitment efforts is the quality of life that the county offers employees who want to settle down and raise families.

Gary Wartik, economic development manager in Thousand Oaks, says that his city and others in the county make it easier on out-of-state companies to move here than their government counterparts in Los Angeles.

The approach in Thousand Oaks is to pay more individual attention to prospective employees than big cities might, Wartik said.

The local city guarantees companies access to an ombudsman who shepherds projects through each step of the process at City Hall. It also charges about one-tenth the price for business license fees than Los Angeles, he said.

While housing prices are high in some parts of the county--the median countywide housing price is $255,000 and higher in Thousand Oaks--they are still lower than in many Los Angeles neighborhoods. And many areas of the county are more affordable. The median home price in Port Hueneme, for instance, is $155,000. In Santa Paula, it’s $166,000. In parts of Oxnard, it’s $183,500.

Ventura, Moorpark Colleges Offer Training

In Schillo’s view, the most important thing the county can do is build a local work force. Housing issues aren’t a concern for people who already live here, he said.

And while there are no plans for a major research university in the future, virtually all county leaders say the planned Cal State Channel Islands campus will go a long way toward training a biotech work force and attracting and retaining companies.

The training programs at Ventura College and Moorpark College already have provided basic biotech training for more than 100 students.

With more biotech companies, Schillo said, more of the county’s best and brightest children will be able to find challenging work at home that pays well enough to let them live and raise their families here.

Spike Loy is one of those people Schillo is talking about.

Valedictorian of his graduating class at Nordhoff High School in Ojai, the 20-year-old is now entering his junior year at Stanford. A diabetic, Loy is studying for a career in biotechnology because he wants to develop a genetically engineered treatment for his disease.

While Ventura County’s biotech industry has grown, it still hasn’t grown enough to convince bright young county residents such as Loy that there is a real future here. This summer he is working in Northern California at a biotech company, Cygnus Inc.

“Around the Silicon Valley biotech is huge, so there’s tons of options up here,” he said. “I’d love to work in Ventura County, but beyond Amgen I don’t know of many other options.”

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Monday: The future of biotech in Ventura County.