Sales Pitch : Antelope Valley Trying to Lure Firms

The Antelope Valley doesn’t want the San Fernando Valley’s smog. It doesn’t want the more populous valley’s crime or crowding. And it doesn’t want the jammed streets that come with life in the big city. But when the talk turns to jobs and business, now that’s a different story.

Beset by an inadequate supply of jobs for its residents and further battered by the recession, Antelope Valley civic leaders this spring are mounting a $180,000 advertising campaign aimed at luring businesses to the high desert. And their No. 1 targets are firms in the San Fernando Valley.

Taking aim at the more urban valley’s problems and higher costs, the recently launched ad campaign touts the Antelope Valley as the place “where smart business goes to grow.” The marketing effort says the region offers available land, a willing work force and, already much heralded, lower housing costs.

The campaign is the fourth annual one for the Antelope Valley. But it has been redesigned this year to reflect the recession and worries about widespread business flight from California, employing such slogans as “Don’t move out. Move up,” and “Don’t Pack Your Bags. Yet.”

Sponsored by the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, as well as the Antelope Valley Local Development Corp. nonprofit business group, this year’s campaign includes two billboards, print ads in the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Business Journal, and radio ads on AM stations KNX and KFWB.

The campaign is aimed at San Fernando Valley businesses because they are the most likely candidates to relocate to the Antelope Valley, officials there said. That is partly because the two regions are close and because many San Fernando Valley businesses already have employees living in the high desert.

Attorney Benjamin Reznick, chairman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., a San Fernando Valley-based group representing about 300 companies with 90,000 employees, said he is not bothered by the campaign, even though it may cost local jobs.

“If there are businesses that are unhappy with their location on the San Fernando Valley floor, our organization would much rather see them go to the Antelope Valley than farther away,” Reznick said.

The campaign has even purchased several ads in the group’s monthly magazine.

Even so, Antelope Valley officials acknowledge that trying to lure businesses and jobs out of one region into another can be a touchy subject, especially during a recession. Thus, the campaign portrays the high desert as a local alternative for businesses thinking of leaving California anyway.

“We’ve been very sensitive to the understanding of not wanting to steal business from the San Fernando Valley,” said Vern Lawson Jr., executive director of the Antelope Valley Local Development Corp. “We walk a fine line and try to be factual” in the ads.

Such advertising rarely makes a settled company relocate. But if a business is already looking around, the promotional effort will help make decision makers aware of the alternatives that are relatively close, said Seth Dudley, a senior vice president at Julien J. Studley Inc., a commercial real estate firm.

Dudley said the Santa Clarita Valley in the past would have been a more likely place for San Fernando Valley businesses to relocate. But with Santa Clarita’s planned shopping mall expected to bring about an increase in land prices, businesses may shift their attention farther north and east.

Lawson said the annual campaigns have drawn about 1,000 inquiries in the past four years. But more than 40,000 Antelope Valley residents still make the long daily commute to jobs in the Los Angeles Basin. And only a few companies have promised to relocate, with mixed results thus far:

* Deluxe Check Printers, which operates three plants in Chatsworth, plans to close one this fall and open a 67,000-square-foot facility in Lancaster. A company spokesman said the high desert’s large supply of trained and willing workers was the deciding factor for the company.

* Lance Campers of Pacoima has been talking with Lancaster officials since 1988 about relocating its manufacturing facility to the city. But the move has stalled, and the city has since given the company two two-year extensions, which give it a new deadline to move of 1993.

* Aerospace giant Lockheed Corp., as part of its plans to unload its Burbank facilities, is relocating its advanced development unit to Palmdale, transferring 4,000 jobs there by 1994. However, the company recently deferred plans to build a $60-million headquarters building in Palmdale.

* The 7-Up/RC Bottling Co. of Southern California closed a distribution center in San Fernando in 1990 to open a center in Lancaster. But problems unrelated to the new location caused the new center to close last year and to be reopened in San Fernando.