Job recruitment hits the road
| Friday, Mar 27 2009 08:48 PM
Last Updated Monday, Mar 30 2009 04:21 PM
Relocations and expansions
The following projects involved the Kern Economic Development Corp., including individual site tours and cooperation with commercial real estate brokers:
Railex LLC
300 jobs at a 200,000-square-foot cold storage distribution center and refrigerated rail service in Delano
FedEx Ground
200 jobs at a 50,000- to 70,000-square-foot distribution center in Bakersfield
Famous Footwear/Brown Shoe Co.
125 jobs at a 350,000-square-foot distribution facility in the Tejon Industrial Complex
SunnyGem LLC
100 jobs at a 100,000-square-foot food processing and packing plant in Wasco
Ashley Furniture
80 jobs at two buildings totaling 91,000 square feet in Kern
Formica Corp.
40 jobs at a 98,000-square-foot distribution center in Shafter
Source: KEDC
Images
Oscar Baltazar, left, and Coby Vance, with CB Richard Ellis, show brokers and business owners the Airport Commerce Center north of Bakersfield during a bus tour by the Kern Economic Development Corp. The tour had various stops around the county, including the North Meadows Industrial Park and the International Trade and Transportation Center. It is hoped that more businesses will locate in Kern County and bring jobs to the area.
The International Trade and Transportation Center northwest of Bakersfield was one of the stops during a Kern County bus tour by the Kern Economic Development Corp with brokers and businessmen.
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A small bus carrying the avant-garde of Kern’s job creation efforts buzzed with numbers talk Thursday as it bumped along the back roads linking partly developed industrial sites north of Bakersfield.
A commercial real estate broker at the front of the bus ticked off triple-net leasing prices, acreage measurements and development schedules as he pointed to warehouses and soon-to-be-cleared agriculture fields along the route.
The stream of figures — and indeed, much of the trip — would surely bore the average resident. Nonetheless, they could be important to the county’s future, in that they may hold the key to persuading businesses to move or expand into Kern.
“This is such a big part of the job creation process, is bringing people in,” said bus tour participant Jennifer Faughn, owner of Bakersfield economic development marketing firm Strategy One. It also helps to change people’s minds about Kern County, she added.
“This kind of thing gets people off the freeway (to) kick the dirt.”
The county’s potential as a center of warehousing, manufacturing and distribution work is among the bright spots in Kern’s economic outlook. Economic development specialists, brokers and developers agree that the area’s central location and large blue-collar work force could position it to attract companies ready to invest in ways that could create jobs here well into the future.
Make no mistake: These are not high-paying, white-collar jobs, nor do they require much education. But because they represent a more steady alternative to, say, harvesting work, industrial positions are considered “core jobs” upon which the county hopes to build and diversify its economy.
Thursday’s bus trip — the first of its kind here, though smaller, individual tours are common — was organized by the Kern Economic Development Corp., a group funded by public and private money to attract employment and investment. KEDC intends to make the industrial site tour an annual event to educate commercial real estate brokers about the county’s various industrial land opportunities and developments.
“This is a chance for us to get a look at what’s happening with Kern County,” said one of the bus tour passengers, Craig Halverson, vice president of acquisitions for Watson Land Co., a Los Angeles-area real estate developer.
He added that the sites along the route represent “definitely a viable opportunity” for investment.
“This looks a lot like the Inland Empire (now a hub of distribution activity) 10 to 15 years ago.”
The tour kicked off with two brief orientations at Seven Oaks Country Club before proceeding to manufacturing and light industrial sites near Meadows Field. The bus rolled on to a large industrial park in Shafter and then to nearby almond orchards being set aside for industrial development.
That prompted a bit of humor from tour leader Melinda Brown, KEDC’s business development director. “That’s your site there — all those trees,” she said.
After the last stop at an agriculture field for sale in Wasco, several among the dozen or so brokers, government officials and other tour participants got into a limousine headed for industrial sites in Fresno County.
Munching a sandwich during the trip back to the country club, Oscar Baltazar, the broker who spent much of the trip rattling off numbers from the front of the bus, said the event exposed Kern’s industrial potential for the people who can help take advantage of it.
“Driving by a property with a sign on it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story,” said Baltazar, CB Richard Ellis’s vice president of industrial properties in Bakersfield.
If education was the goal, it seems to have succeeded in the case of tour bus rider James Brown, senior managing director with commercial real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis in Universal City.
“I was very much surprised at all of what’s happening in Bakersfield,” said Brown, who is working with Tejon Ranch Co. to fill out the Lebec-based agribusiness and real estate development company’s large industrial site near the foot of the Grapevine.
“In a way,” he said, Kern “is like a hidden gem.”
