C.W. Cook Co. Inc.

Year Founded: 1911

Core Business: Land surveying, civil engineering, land-use entitlements, digital graphics and animation

Revenues in 1988: $5 million

Revenues in 1993: $1.25 million

Revenues in 1998 (projected): $2.25 million

Employees in 1988: 65

Employees in 1993: 15

Employees in 1998: 25

Goal: To keep growing the L.A. operations, while expanding into the Santa Barbara area

Driving Force: An upswing in the real estate development cycle

By ELIZABETH HAYES

Staff Reporter

Paul Cook knows all about real estate swings. His firm is an 87-year-old survivor of the market’s vagaries, but it’s not a brokerage or developer.

C.W. Cook Co. Inc. does land surveying, civil engineering and land-use entitlement work all of which are dependent on a healthy real estate climate. When the recession hit in the early 1990s, many of Cook’s competitors went belly up and the skilled labor moved to such high-growth states as Florida, Texas, Nevada and Colorado.

C.W. Cook, which moved to Culver City from L.A. last February, was also hard hit. Its staff was reduced from 65 before the recession to 15 by 1993, while revenues sank by three-quarters.

“It was extreme sacrifice time, financially and emotionally,” said Cook, 52, grandson of the founder and now president of the family-owned firm.

The firm managed to hang on, relying on its huge roster of contacts and longstanding reputation to drum up work from clients in more recession-proof sectors entertainment, government and expert witness work, because people tend to sue one another in bad times. Cities also tend to crack down on zoning violations in recessionary periods, which meant the company was called upon to help violators either rectify the zoning infraction or secure conditional use permits.

Today, it has recovered somewhat. But with 25 employees, it’s still nowhere near its late-1980s level. The problem today is not a lack of work, but a lack of talent, Cook said.

“What’s happening now is, we’re quite busy and we can’t find decent help to hire,” Cook said. “It’s difficult. We’ve had to turn away work. It’s slowed our growth.”

The company has been able to reel in some talent cast adrift when competing firms failed, including a land surveyor and civil engineer who started working for Cook in the past week.

“When you have 65 people, you have to take every job you can. You get a lot of bad (jobs) with the good,” Cook said. “We can be selective now.”

C.W. Cook has deep roots in L.A. Just after the turn of the century, Clarence Westgate Cook taught land surveying and civil and structural engineering at USC. To supplement his teaching salary, he established a land surveying company in a building near the university. That sideline venture soon grew into a successful, full-time business.

His son, Caneth Westgate Cook, became president of the firm in 1951. And his sons, Paul and Lloyd, joined the firm in the 1960s. They took over as president and vice president, respectively, upon their father’s retirement in the mid-1970s, when there were only five employees. The two brothers continue in those capacities today, and co-own the firm.

Like the firm itself, the land surveying profession has changed over the years, especially from a technological standpoint. But the purpose of survey work has not. Field surveyors may use hand-held computers, but they still have to probe for the original boundary markers to establish property lines mainly for new construction or to settle disputes between neighbors.

“You have to physically find these things. It’s like a treasure hunt,” Cook said.

In all, the firm has completed more than 60,000 land surveys and has one of the largest collections of surveys outside the Office of the Los Angeles County Surveyor.

“They’re highly thought of. They’ve been in business forever,” said Robert Hennon, a partner at Hennon & Associates, a La Canada Flintridge-based surveying and engineering firm.

The third generation of Cooks has broadened the company’s focus. In the ’70s, it began doing subdivision work, and as environmental laws started taking hold, it hired a land-use planner. Then, in response to the rise of homeowners associations, it hired a public-affairs specialist, Craig Lawson, who was director of research for former L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley. Lawson works with political leaders and homeowners, usually on behalf of developers, to iron out concerns.

The firm tries to maintain a mix of public- and private-sector work, because the latter is so cyclical. It has done design and infrastructure studies for the planned L.A. County-USC Medical Center replacement hospital; planning, engineering and land-use entitlement work for the 28-acre Devonshire Downs site at Cal State Northridge; surveying and civil engineering for various L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency projects, including the grading improvements at the Watts Towers.

Commercial and industrial projects on which the firm has been involved include the Lockheed Martin-Fremont Associates 1.5 million-square-foot corporate industrial center in the Harbor Gateway area; phase two of the Water Garden office complex in Santa Monica; Kilroy Industries’ $300 million business park at the Long Beach Airport; and a planned casino in Hawaiian Gardens.

Sometimes, clients will come to C.W. Cook and ask about a piece of land they’ve seen, but they don’t know what the land-use restrictions are, so the firm researches the matter.

Then there’s the forensic work. A recent court case took Cook to Kern County, where a motorcyclist fell into a ditch and broke his neck. Cook had to figure out whose land the ditch was on.

While the firm has only moved its offices three times in 87 years, it had never opened a branch outside the L.A. area until last June. Cook rented office space on State Street in Santa Barbara and he spends Fridays working from there. He is now in the process of selling his L.A.-area home and relocating his residence to Santa Barbara, hoping to capitalize on the rapid growth starting to mushroom in the Goleta area. Shopping centers, golf courses and homes are all in the offing over the next two years.

“We’re positioning ourselves,” Cook said. “The local talent (in Santa Barbara) is so booked, I pick up the newer stuff.”