Anthony International is making a long-term commitment to the San Fernando Valley. The manufacturer of commercial refrigerator and freezer doors resigned a lease to remain in its Sylmar location and currently is doing a study on constructing a new facility within a four-mile radius. That is quite a change from a year ago when the company considered relocating to Mexico, a move that would cost the Valley some 800 jobs and empty out 350,000 square feet of industrial space. The region’s manufacturing base avoided a black eye in that Anthony was able to work out with state and local officials issues facing the company including environmental regulations and adequate employee parking. “Once you understood the process and the direction to go it was a positive experience,” said Anthony International President and CEO Jeffrey Clark. The familiar story in Southern California is about companies packing up and leaving lured away to other states by tax incentives or pushed out by an environment perceived as anti-business. Then there are those companies that looked at leaving and stayed. Companies like Anthony International or Southwest Moulding, a frame manufacturer in Sun Valley sold by the owners in 2006 to one of its employees, Noemi Prado. Southwest employs 49 workers and while there are challenges in being a manufacturer in the state, she did not want to relocate. “When you want to start your own business, the rules and everything you need takes forever,” Prado said. There are some 70,000 businesses in the Valley alone, according to the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. But the organization finds itself in a difficult spot in trying to keep any from moving elsewhere. More often than not, said President and CEO Bruce Ackerman, the Alliance only finds out once it’s too late to make a business owner change their mind. To get around that hurdle, the organization takes an approach that the earlier the contact with a business the better. Offers of the assistance programs available from the Alliance or the Los Angeles County Economic Development are made when a business is doing well and in a growth mode, perhaps looking for additional space. At Anthony, the Alliance worked with Clark, company CFO Daniel Zeddy and the human resources department to help with any issues, and even directed $100,000 in training. Before the Alliance stepped in to cut the red tape, Clark said it had been frustrating dealing with the politics involved. The perception in the business community is that it is hard to get through the politics but the Alliance showed that it did care about supporting business, Clark said. “It’s not just hot air,” he said. To identify those companies looking to move, the Alliance maintains regular contact with a front line of developers, brokers and financial professionals, Ackerman said. Even accountants and attorneys are contacted and given a soft marketing pitch of what the Alliance offers in business assistance, he added. “The bankers like that because it is not a service they typically offer and it gives them an added benefit,” Ackerman said. A move out of the Valley was on the mind of Michael Michrowski when the manufacturing company he co-owns outgrew its space in Chatsworth. He looked at places in Valencia and Oxnard but in the end chose to relocate Utility Refrigerator to Pacoima. The company made the move in November but faced other issues in actually occupying the building on Bradley Avenue. That is where the Alliance stepped in to navigate with zoning and occupancy. “I didn’t realize that they would be so significant,” Michrowski said. In such border cities as Burbank, Calabasas and Glendale a business owner simply picks up a phone to city hall to talk with an official on a business-related issue. In the Valley, however, things can get complicated. The bureaucracy is so large that it can never be clear who to call with a permitting, zoning or enforcement issue, Ackerman said. Other costs to business are beyond the control of what the Alliance can help with. Even with reforms to the worker’s compensation system, the expense remains a burden. For Anthony and after-market auto parts manufacturer MOC Products Co. in Pacoima, environmental regulations are a part of doing business. Those regulations and other cost issues had executives at MOC looking at a move to Nevada a decade ago and continue to weigh on the company today, said Eric Berg, vice president of operations Not much has changed in that 10 years and a strong case could be made to at least move manufacturing out of the Valley, Berg said. “It may be something we revisit,” Berg said. Reasons why a company decides to stay vary. At MOC, it came down to the owner likes being in Southern California. Their Valley locations give Anthony and Utility access to their developed supply chains; and for Anthony the cost of electricity was cheaper in the U.S. than in Mexico. The employees also contribute to these companies remaining in the Valley. Clark describes the workers at Anthony as having a great knowledge of manufacturing refrigerator doors. Utility and MOC Products hire area residents to take advantage of tax credits by being within the borders of an enterprise zone. That enterprise zone had expired for a time late last year until lawmakers stepped into to include the Pacoima area within the boundaries of another existing zone. “That would have been a serious blow,” Berg said had the enterprise zone not been given a new life. “To take those credits away would make it difficult.”
