A Vision Realized

During the great recession, a group of community leaders had a new vision for Santa Clarita Valley — that vision was to increase job creation, strengthen existing companies and unify our region’s approach to economic development.

They recognized that our Valley has performed better than almost all other areas of Southern California. However, they also recognized a unique opportunity to charge ahead while many other communities had been forced to retreat. Their vision was to capitalize on this opportunity by forming a regional, public-private partnership for economic development.

In 2011, we turned that vision into a reality. Early in the year, we filled out our staff and focused on building an organization with the potential to benefit our residents for generations to come. As the year progressed, we kicked off our business attraction & retention campaign and added even more leadership to our board.

Our approach has already delivered remarkable results. By working together as one region, our voice is stronger and we are able to help coordinate and build upon the economic development work of many partner organizations. The work at SCVEDC is structured around four focus areas and in each area we made significant progress in 2011. Here are a few of the highlights:

Goal 1: Business Attraction

In order to be successful at business recruitment, SCVEDC spent the first half of 2011 gathering competitive information about specific industry sectors that are expected to thrive in the Santa Clarita Valley over the next five years. Our research identified the following industry targets:

Since the kick-off of our attraction campaign on June 1, 2011, SCVEDC has pitched relocation to more than 350 companies through custom proposals, direct mail and sales calls. We currently have 34 prospects that are actively evaluating the Santa Clarita Valley as a potential location as a result of our efforts. And, overall, 10 companies were attracted or retained with assistance from SCVEDC during the year.

Goal 2: Business Retention and Expansion

At the SCVEDC, we recognize that over 80 percent of all new jobs created will come from existing companies. We also know that it is much easier to retain existing companies than it is to attract new prospects. For both of those reasons, we are focused on strengthening existing firms and continuously improving our local operating environment.

In early 2011, a huge victory was realized when the valley received conditional designation for a new, expanded Enterprise Zone. The new zone is on track for final designation in early 2012.

To organize and direct the many business resources available to local firms, the SCVEDC established the Business Expansion and Retention program. With the help of our BEAR partners, each year the SCVEDC provides no-cost, confidential one-on-one business assistance visits with primary industry employers. Information gathered through the BEAR program is used to locate potential business expansion opportunities, identify at-risk companies and develop appropriate assistance solutions.

Goal 3: Community Marketing

The Santa Clarita Valley continues to be one of the most productive and business–friendly locations in Southern California. Unfortunately, all too often we come across companies and individuals that simply do not have an accurate perception of our valley. At the SCVEDC, we work to shift those perceptions by promoting the Santa Clarita Valley as the premier destination for business development in Southern California.

In 2011, our community marketing focus was on building the tools called for in our Marketing Plan. We started with launching an industry-leading, market-focused website (scvedc.org). Then, we supported this with a variety of print media pieces.

Earlier this year we produced an attraction package consisting of a folder, 10-page overview brochure and target industry inserts to provide prospective clients with a summary of our region’s key strengths and competitive positions in several business sectors. This package is now further enhanced by our recently published, 50-page Economic Development Guide magazine, which allows us to showcase the region’s growing aerospace and defense industry and high quality of life to a broader audience.

While building our marketing outreach we also initiated a community engagement program to leverage our best spokespeople —existing residents, business owners and community leaders. Social media (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) are all used frequently to help get the word out about key projects and to engage our community. Also a bi-weekly newsletter, SCV Business Update, now goes out to more than 8,000 local business leaders, providing yet another point of contact and opportunity to generate conversations around key issues.

Accurate and reliable information is essential to business development. Companies need clear information about the status of the local economy and credible projections about what the future holds.

For years, economic information in the Santa Clarita Valley has been housed within separate organizations, making it difficult for businesses and site selectors to access. At the SCVEDC, our goal is to centralize existing economic information and to publish additional studies, reports and data sets to meet the needs of business.

In 2011, we partnered with College of the Canyons’ Economic Development Division to present the Santa Clarita Valley Economic and Real Estate Outlook conference. The event’s annual forecast, produced by a leading, independent economic consultancy, further supported our own research that the Santa Clarita Valley is positioned to outperform almost all areas of southern California in the area of job creation.

In addition to conference, the SCVEDC began publishing a monthly Economic Snapshot and quarterly Economic Forecast update. Both reports allow our organization and the local business community to track our region’s progress in near real time.

Lastly, to provide clients with free, high quality commercial real estate information, we built a GIS-enabled buildings and sites database, scvsitesearch.com. This frequently updated, searchable database contains profiles of more than 300 properties available locally. Other information, such as area demographics or business clusters can also be queried for each listing.

And to think we are just getting started.

Looking forward, the SCVEDC is expected to deliver big results in 2012. Together, our leadership and thoughtful preparation have positioned the SCVEDC to deliver on the “New Vision” of our leaders and making it one of the most productive economic development corporations in California. The future looks very bright for the Santa Clarita Valley and SCVEDC.

Great things are ahead. Come join us.