Continued Business Growth Seen for Valley
The San Fernando Valley economy is poised for continued growth this year, but nagging problems of traffic, education and land use must be addressed to prevent business defections to outlying suburbs, economist Jack Kyser said Thursday.
Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., predicted a 2.3% increase in the number of jobs in the Valley region this year, contrasted with 2.4% in 1999.
“In employment [growth], you’re probably doing better than the rest of the county,” Kyser said. “The rapid growth in the entertainment industry is fueling that.”
But Kyser, who delivered the keynote address at the Summit 2000 meeting of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, said dealing with the Valley’s major issues is paramount.
“Time’s a-wasting,” he said. “We should have been working on that yesterday.”
The issues of traffic, education and land use emerged as consistent concerns by residents, business owners and business leaders, according to several reports issued Thursday. In one report, 90% of Valley residents surveyed said traffic delays on local roads and freeways have gotten worse recently.
By failing to address those concerns, Kyser and other speakers said, the Valley risks continued business and residential defections to newer, nearby suburbs, especially in western Ventura County.
“Those places are really competitors to the Valley,” said Joel Kotkin, senior fellow with the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy. “You’ve got a leakage of companies from the Valley, and people from the Valley, moving out to the Thousand Oaks and Westlake area.”
Kotkin jokingly referred to these areas--popular among families headed by young professionals--as “Nerdistans.”
“So how do we respond to the challenge of the Nerdistans, the newer suburbs? One way is that we need to begin to understand what we are. We are not what we used to be. We are in a very delicate middle ground between the urban core and the ever-evolving periphery,” he said.
“We’re something different.”
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Helping to quantify the new tone and texture of the Valley region--stretching, by the Alliance’s definition, from Glendale to Calabasas (and in some cases Bell Canyon)--presenters of five separate reports painted a picture of a diverse Valley, both ethnically and in its business mix, with a high loyalty factor among residents and companies.
According to Kyser’s economic forecast for the Valley--the first ever created for the region by the LAEDC--the Valley is now in a “solid growth mode,” with the 2000 employment growth expected to keep pace with last year’s figure, and with retail sales this year expected to increase by a healthy 4.1%, to $11.05 billion.
Confirming data in a report released last year by Cal State Northridge, Kyser said the largest job sector is service, which includes entertainment and computer programming. This segment accounted for 45% of the region’s total private sector work force, or 307,200 jobs. The second largest is retail trade, with 15.5%, or 106,000 jobs.
Third on the list is manufacturing, which accounted for 14.5%, or 99,000 jobs. This category includes aerospace, which took a sizable hit in the late 1980s but still remains surprisingly strong.
One of the reports released Thursday--the San Fernando Valley Almanac--included a comparative analysis of business clusters, using standard industrial classifications, or SIC codes. Counting all firms that fit in the aerospace category, the report said the Valley had more aerospace firms than any other region in the nation. That assessment is based solely on the number of companies, not on aerospace revenues or employment.
Given the local downturn in aerospace, attorney Bob Scott, who put together the report, found the results startling and said it reflects the large number of relatively small, “second-tier” firms that sprung up to service the Valley aerospace giants, many of which have since moved on.
Of all of the business sectors examined--including entertainment, manufacturing and finance, insurance or real estate--aerospace was the only category in which the Valley came out on top.
The Valley ranked sixth nationwide in the number of firms in finance, insurance or real estate; fifth in the number of manufacturing companies and third (behind New York and Los Angeles) in entertainment.
Scott, however, noted that the Los Angeles number--2,365 firms--included companies in the Los Angeles portion of the Valley.
Backers of Valley secession found several pieces of useful information in Thursday’s presentations.
A Valley public opinion poll, the first to be conducted for the region by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, said 56% of respondents would vote for the Valley to separate from Los Angeles; 23% would vote no and another 23% said they did not know.
Even Kotkin, a Valley resident, suggested it was time for the Valley to find a system of governance in which it would not be “an appendage” of Los Angeles.
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Jeff Brain, president of Valley VOTE, which is backing secession, was heartened by the survey results.
“We feel that this confirms that the sentiment is growing,” Brain said. “It’s good to see it confirmed by an independent and credible source.”
Also formally released Thursday was a survey of business owners that listed their key concerns as traffic congestion, housing costs, lack of skilled workers and lack of space to expand.
Some of the data released Thursday can be found at the Alliance Web site: https://www.valleyofthestars.org.
