|
If you think San Diego’s high-tech workforce exists only north of Highway 52, are you ever in for a surprise. There's a subtle shift occurring in the economic sands of this evolving city, and Centre City seems poised to give the likes of Sorrento Valley a run for its money.
The conventional wisdom goes something like this: With vacancy rates shriveling to the north and a workforce that seemingly grows younger by the day, technology companies are looking south for salvation — and the excitement that comes with life in a town's urban center. Bye bye, burbs; Hello, Downtown.
But this is not just simply a choice of Park Avenue over Green Acres. The competition for high-tech jobs nationwide demands it. These jobs pay more in cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Boston, so it won’t be our sunshine alone that attracts the best and brightest — nor will it be enough to prevent the talent coming out of UCSD from skipping town for greener pastures.
Two years ago — when just a few visionaries were seriously hawking Downtown as the next high-tech mecca — a survey of about 100 San Diego software companies opened the eyes of local industry marketers. In response to the poll, one in four said they would consider moving their firms to Centre City under the right conditions.
"I was really surprised how high the number was. I thought the number would be more like 5 percent," recalls Joe Raguso, executive director of the San Diego Regional Technology Alliance. Established in 1994 in the wake of local defense industry cutbacks to assist in the transition to a more commercially based economy, the alliance has helped find the seed money from state and federal purses for many of San Diego’s high-tech start-ups.
A native New Yorker and MIT grad, Raguso isn’t subtle when he describes the attraction of Downtown as it applies to today’s youthful workforce. "You know, 27-year-old people do not want to be living in the suburbs, driving I don’t know how many exits on the I-15," he says. "When you have a 6-year-old kid, if the city schools suck at that point, then OK, it’s time to move out to the suburbs. Or if you feel threatened."
But if you look at what they're doing in other high-tech towns, many people have chosen to live in the same area they work "because people don’t want to be living in their cars. It will put us at a competitive disadvantage if we don’t plan accordingly, I think," Raguso adds. Those cities, like San Diego, have discovered that the urban core provides the most promise to draw the necessary talent.
"The whole idea of living in a loft, to be able to party in the Gaslamp — people are starting to get the idea that that’s the way to market it," the alliance chief says.
It also doesn’t hurt that the land squeeze up north has helped make rent for available office space Downtown more competitive, even cheaper in some cases. Add to that the savvy of some landlords who have wired their office towers stem to stern with high-speed fiber optics, the financial incentives that come with investment in the inner city and a massive effort to rezone Downtown to attract high-techs, and you have one tough area to ignore for its potential.
As reported on the Alliance's Web site — www.sdrta.org — at least 40 technology firms call Downtown home. They run the high-tech gamut, from software and Web site developers to biomedical producers, communication companies and computer specialists.
Think Torrey Pines' biotech firms are experienced in the lab? Well, don’t tell that to the folks at the Kelco processing plant under the Coronado Bridge at Downtown’s edge in Barrio Logan. "We feel like we’ve been in the biotech business really since the 1960s," says plant manager Greg Kurdys. "Most of those places on the fringes of town are in development stages. This plant is the commercial realization of biotech development that happened 30 years ago."
Today, the massive plant bears the name NutraSweet Kelco, the result of a corporate realignment after Monsanto bought the facility from Merck in 1995. About 60 R&D employees work at the site's smaller "clean room," which Kurdys says is larger than most wet labs at biotechs to the north. An additional 120 researchers work out of Monsanto's Aero Drive clean room, said to be the largest in the county.
Kelco, the largest kelp harvester in California, annually produces millions of pounds of so-called algins, a kelp byproduct used as a thickening and stabilizing agent in everything from salad dressings and beer to car wax and ice cream. Since the early 60s, Kelco also has been a significant producer of xanthan gum, a similar suspending agent derived from a bacteria.
Raguso thinks it unlikely that Downtown landowners will seek out similar tenants like Kelco. "Let's say you own a large warehouse over in the East Village area. You probably want sort of white-collar thinking types more so than new biotechs or electronics manufacturers. You probably want more of the knowledge-based economy." But space to accommodate such uses exists, and their moving to the urban core would parallel what’s going on in the downtowns of other high-tech cities.
With voters next month deciding the fate of the proposed ballpark redevelopment plans, high-tech companies thinking of a move Downtown should take heed. The 26-block area on the ballot falls within several empowerment and enterprise zones, "so you get huge, huge benefits if you were a company to invest in that area," Raguso says. "Everything from reinvesting capital to employee tax rebates from the state. I mean, that’s something that nobody's marketed to these companies."
He says it’s almost a slam dunk that John Moores will move his software company, Peregrine Systems, down near the ballpark. And others will undoubtedly follow. "I think you'll see a restructuring where those jobs that play off human culture will move Downtown, those where you’re interacting with a lot of people, where you’re seeing many different aspects of life," he says. "It’s that energy, I think, that will sell Downtown."
|
