City Leaders Join Forces to Lure Business to the Region
In the first campaign of its kind, municipal economic-development leaders have banded together to lure Southern California companies to Ventura County.
“We have an opportunity to selectively go out and recruit industries that suit the county,” said Joe McClure, executive director of the Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County. “We’re looking ahead and trying to be visionaries.”
The group has targeted 5,000 companies--mostly in the low-pollution technology, communications and biotechnology fields--in the San Fernando Valley and the rest of Los Angeles as prime candidates to bolt across the county line.
The mantra repeated to those crowded business communities: Ventura County is a nice place to work--and live. The program, which is funded by a $110,000 grant from the county office of Southern California Edison, is a product of 10 months of cooperation between city officials meeting under the aegis of the economic development collaborative. The organization will begin a mail campaign in February, followed by phone calls from city officials to potential candidates. Eventually, if cities get their feet in the door, face-to-face meetings will be held, with the collaborative acting as a facilitator.
The campaign is necessary for the same reason any advertising campaign is necessary. Buyers--companies that might consider moving--aren’t aware of what Ventura County is selling, experts said.
“There’s a certain mind-set of people who see us merely as an extension of L.A.,” said Gary Wartik, manager of economic development for Thousand Oaks. “This was developed to communicate more effectively. We’re not just a bedroom community.”
The postcards and brochures promote the county’s relative low cost, its open spaces and its focus on family life, with testimonials from people such as an executive from Haas Automation, a company that moved to Oxnard from Chatsworth in 1997.
*
It’s a change of strategy for a county in which cities have usually gone their own way in searching for leads, one that has led to competition between cities that actively recruit for businesses.
“This just makes more sense than five cities going over there and [each] pounding on their door,” McClure said. Economic officials now are saying that what’s good for the county is good for them, and that each city has a niche. Oxnard, with wide swaths of land, is suitable for industry. Thousand Oaks is just right for office buildings. And Camarillo works for high-tech.
And that’s why cities must work together on this kind of campaign, participants said, particularly when areas outside California have been using the strategy for years.
“I’ve been working up here for 20 years, and this is the first attempt that gets all of the cities together in one unified campaign,” said Harry Preston, first vice president at CB Richard Ellis in Ventura and a consultant on the campaign. “If you look at Ventura County, each city has a real problem as far as attracting business. Where is your labor? Where is your affordable housing? As a county, we have as much as anyone can want.”
*
A company’s move here brings with it home buyers, shoppers and spouses seeking work--all of whom can benefit the county’s other cities, officials said.
“We’re in a friendly competition,” said Steve Kinney, president of the Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp. “We’re concerned about the greater good at the end of the day. We would always rather see a company end up in the county than not.”
