The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. took a big step last week toward shoring up its position as a major countywide economic development force as it folded the management of the World Trade Center Association of Los Angeles-Long Beach into its operations.

The joining of these two business groups will allow the LAEDC to add trade-consulting services provided by the World Trade Center Association to the array of services it offers businesses throughout L.A. County as well as import-export consulting services to companies in neighboring Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

The move comes one year after the LAEDC merged the California Fashion Association into its operations and, according to LAEDC president and chief executive Lee Harrington, it may not be the last such merger.

“We’ll keep our eyes open for other opportunities to form strong partnerships with other industry associations,” Harrington said.

In the case of LAEDC and WTCA, the two groups will keep their separate names and maintain some separate operations, he said, but top management of the two organizations will be consolidated. Harrington became the president and chief executive of the World Trade Center Association last week, taking over from Tom Teofilo, who stepped down to spend more time running a family business. Teofilo will remain a consultant to the joint organization. A search is now under way for a new executive responsible strictly for trade consulting services.

WTCA will become a full operating subsidiary of the LAEDC on April 1; with many of its 40 board members added to the LAEDC’s 80-member board. Since there is considerable board member overlap, Harrington expects the consolidated board to have about 100 members. There will also be a new advisory board formed to replace the current WTCA governing board.

Despite WTCA’s new status as an operating subsidiary of LAEDC, Harrington characterized the announcement as an “affiliation” and not a formal merger, noting that since the two organizations are different types of non-profits, there were legal issues that would have to be ironed out before a formal merger took place.

He also said the goal of the affiliation was to expand the array of services offered, not to cut overhead.

“This is not a cost-cutting affiliation; rather, it’s a leveraged partnership, where each group can add to the services that it offers,” Harrington said.

To bolster that statement, Harrington said that the WTCA’s two offices in Long Beach and Downtown L.A. will remain open and fully staffed. Currently, the LAEDC has about 40 staff members, while the WTCA has about a dozen trade experts and a couple of administrative personnel.

The LAEDC has about 225 member companies, while the WTCA has about 375 member companies.

Harrington and other leaders in the two groups said the agreement to merge management came quickly on the heels of Teofilo’s announcement in October that he’d resign effective Dec. 31, 2000.

One of the key instigators of the move was James Hankla, the chief executive of the $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor rail project now under construction between the ports and Downtown L.A. The former Long Beach city manager joined the LAEDC board in 1982 and the WTCA board in 1994.

“As a member of both organizations’ boards, I had long thought the two organizations could be combined to great positive effect,” Hankla said. “After all, most world-class economic development organizations have a trade component.

“But it was Tom’s announcement in October that he was leaving that caused me to move beyond the thought stage and actually approach other board members about it,” Hankla said. “At that point, I knew that if this was going to become reality, it was going to have to be done quickly, before a successor was named.”

Hankla quickly got Harrington on board, and enlisted the support of Barry Sedlik, the Southern California Edison economic development executive who had served as WTCA chairman through June, and current chair Bruce MacRae, a regional executive for United Parcel Service.

“There are more than 100 World Trade Center Associations around the world, mostly focused on member services,” Sedlik said. “But what set us apart was our focus on using international trade as a key for the economic development of our region. And that’s why it made so much sense for us to link up with the LAEDC.”

Harrington, Hankla and Sedlik all said they don’t expect major turf battles to result from the merger.

“I’ve been on both boards and I knew the staff and the leadership of both would be compatible if they were joined,” Hankla said.