The West Side of Los Angeles County is considered by many to be
a commercial haven.
Within its borders is a blend of top-notch educational
institutions and entertainment companies, along with a highly
skilled workforce and high-income consumer, all located within
miles of the beach.
And on Friday, a group of Westside business people, politicians
and residents discussed the area’s economic landscape and
growing job opportunities at the Fourth Annual Westside Economic
Summit in Culver City.
The West Side includes the cities of Beverly Hills, Malibu,
Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and some parts of Los Angeles, such
as Bel Air, Brentwood, Venice and Westwood.
As of April 1, 2000, the population of the area was 1,051,352
people, which is comparable in size to the Salt Lake City
metropolitan area, according to a Nov. 4 press release from the Los
Angeles Economic Development Corporation.
Nancy Sidhu, vice president and senior economist with the Los
Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, identified the
West Side’s strengths and weaknesses.
Sidhu identified UCLA Medical Center as a strength because of
its highly-rated health coverage and medical research.
According to the center’s Web site, more than 300,000
patients from around the world receive care at the hospital.
U.S. News and World Report ranked the hospital fifth on the
honor roll in its 2005 survey of America’s best
hospitals.
UCLA’s museums were also considered a strength, as well as
the university’s prominence as an educational
institution.
Topping the list of area weaknesses were traffic congestion and
the lack of affordable housing.
City officials on the panel said they would consider exploring
new ways to combat both problems.
The area is also seeing expansion of its commercial sector,
though many businesses seeking to enter the affluent market are
finding the process difficult, as existing area businesses fight to
keep competition at bay.
“Other businesses want to keep you out because it is so
lucrative, so profitable and they want it for themselves,”
said Jay Newman, chief operating officer for The Athens Group, an
upscale real estate development company, and a panelist at the
summit.
The Athens Group recently gained approval from Beverly Hills
voters to build the Montage Hotel, a 214-room seven-story luxury
facility that will be located in the community’s high-rent
commercial district, known as the Golden Triangle.
Although a site will be cleared for the hotel’s
construction this summer, the lead up to approval was a long and
arduous process, Newman said.
He said the West Side’s traditional opposition to further
commercial development in the area serves as a buffer for existing
local businesses against those trying to enter the lucrative
market.
Competing luxury hotels near the city organized a well-financed
campaign against the developers of the hotel to force a pubic vote
on its building permit, Newman said. He estimated the hotel’s
developers were forced to spend more than a million dollars
defending the project.
Newman said the luxury hotel market in California is coming off
one of its best years ever in 2004, which is why the opposition
from existing hotels was so fierce.
He said they do not want new hotels potentially taking away
valuable, affluent customers.
Now that the project has been approved, Newman said the hotel
will likely hire about 400 full and part-time employees.
Yahoo! is also bringing jobs to the West Side.
The Internet company recently leased office space in Santa
Monica to house its burgeoning Yahoo! Media Group, which provides
online media and content, such as movies, music and news.
At the summit, Yahoo! Media Group Chief of Staff Jennifer
Trzepacz said the department’s move to Santa Monica from
northern California was due to Yahoo!’s desire to form
stronger relationships with the media community, while having
access to the highly-skilled pool of workers who live in the
area.
Trzepacz said Yahoo! Media Group had to sweeten employment
offers, such as offering bonuses to people who lived outside the
area, in order to compensate for the high prices of housing and
apartments in Santa Monica.
Yahoo! will likely establish a relationship with UCLA in the
future by offering internships and actively recruiting on campus,
she said.