There seems to be some confusion. As you can see from our coverage in this issue of the annual Valley Economic Forecast put out by Cal State Northridge and the accompanying Economic Summit recently (starting on page 1) there are two things going on the economic forecast is generally good but much of the buzz at the summit was full of negativity by panelists and audience members. The forecast: The economic climate in the San Fernando Valley remains robust despite falling housing prices and a shrinking skilled-labor pool. Job and retail growth in the San Fernando Valley will be positive, with new jobs expecting to grow by 1.5 percent in the region. Not a lot, but decent. The best news is that the Valley is officially no longer a bedroom community. It’s a job center. There are 30,000 more jobs than there are residents to fill them. So we’ve got loads of commuters coming in. But feedback from panelists, keynote speakers and others didn’t correspond with all this. The high cost of doing business here, is still a huge problem. There are also not enough trained employees and there’s mounting bureaucracy in the city of L.A. This bureaucracy just doesn’t seem to get better. I’ve talked a lot about it in this column. Representatives of various industries encouraged businesspeople to write their legislators about their increased frustration. Even keynote speaker Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese and the burgeoning uWink chain of trendy restaurants that started in the Valley, criticized the local business climate. He said that doing business in the San Fernando Valley is a mixed bag, with the negatives far outweighing the positives. Confused? This will add to the confusion even more. Included in the CSUN Valley economic forecast are the results of a survey of Valley businesses conducted by Davis Research. This survey found that in the past year these companies have encountered pretty heavy competition and increased costs. Employee compensation is also higher but so are sales. The most interesting results of the survey, however, are these: Despite all the criticism of doing business here, 77.1% of businesspeople surveyed said they wouldn’t consider moving out of the Valley in the next two years. The survey results also showed that 31.8% (the highest percent results) felt that there are no advantages to moving from the Valley. And here’s the crux of it all. The survey results show that 51.2% of respondents say that location is the main reason for staying in the Valley. You just can’t beat it. Access to ports, huge markets in Asia all that. You can’t get that in Idaho or Tennessee. Business Journal Editor Jason Schaff can be reached at (818) 316-3125 or at [email protected] .
