SUBURBS—Good Times Don’t Flow to North County

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When it comes to reaping the benefits of the booming L.A. economy, Antelope Valley is losing out to western San Bernardino County.

The cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, which make up the economic hub of the Antelope Valley, have seen relatively little positive impact from the strong industrial market in L.A., according to a new study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

The area’s problems are exemplified by the inability of industrial developers to get financing for speculative construction there, according to Danny Roberts, assistant executive director for the Palmdale Redevelopment Agency.

“That’s the toughest thing that we find,” said Roberts. “We have a lot of property and we have developers who want to build, but there is lack of support from financial institutions because of this perception of the area as too remote.”

However, Roberts believes there is reason to be optimistic. After last year’s decision by SR Technics to locate a major aircraft maintenance facility in Palmdale and bring 5,000 jobs to the region, businesses have started to take a closer look at the Antelope Valley.

Meanwhile, the main beneficiary of the shortage of high-end industrial space in L.A. has been the area around Ontario.

“The two areas (Ontario and the Antelope Valley) compete directly with each other for the same type of businesses,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist with the LAEDC. “The Ontario region has the upper hand at the moment, because they’re closer to the ports, they have the airport with the United Parcel Service hub, and they are right on the main highways and railroad tracks out of California.”

Part of the Antelope Valley’s problem, according to Kyser, is the common perception that the area is too remote and hard to access.

Although it’s famous for being the place where some of the most advanced and secretive aerospace projects are being developed (it’s where Boeing Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. are developing the Joint Strike Fighter), the Antelope Valley does not leap to mind as an obvious location for lower-tech businesses.

The region is more of a bedroom community and counts, as of January 2000, 60,400 jobs for a population of 333,150 residents. That amounts to 5.5 residents per job. By contrast, L.A. County as a whole has 4.1 million jobs for a population of 10 million people, or 2.4 people per job.

To improve these odds and attract more businesses to the region, more needs to be done to spread the word about the Antelope Valley as a place to do business rather than just a place to buy an affordable house.

“They need to make a more sophisticated and dedicated effort to market themselves,” said Kyser. “There’s a lot that can be done in terms of talking to real estate developers and business groups.”

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