Mayor Tells Chamber Members He's Positive About the Local Economy in 2011

The times, they are a changing. For the better.

That was the message driven home to an audience of businesspeople and city officials attending the Poway Chamber of Commerce’s annual State of the City breakfast Thursday at the Maderas Golf Club on Old Stage Road.

Mayor Don Higginson, one of the two main speakers appearing, repeated many of the points he advanced in the city of Poway’s State of the City Address on Tuesday.

He was upbeat about the positive signs lifting the local economy in 2011. But he cautioned that the recovery has been slow to take effect, and will take some time to reach mid-2000s economic conditions.

For example, he noted that Poway’s share of retail sales tax revenues still lag the collection amounts enjoyed in boom times of years past.

It will take three and a half years “to get back to where we were before the recession,” he said.

Nevertheless, Higginson said the city was able to bypass the worst of the budget cutting experienced by surrounding cities.

“We haven’t seen such an effect to where we have to have (major) cuts in services,” he said.

He rattled off a number of new businesses on their way that should help boost activities and generate sales taxes for future years, including the In-N-Out and SONIC restaurants, not to mention the new, expanded Toyota dealership and new Lowes home improvement store.

He mentioned the proposed expansion of the existing 125,000-square-foot Walmart store into a 193,000-square-foot supercenter store, which will come under intense public scrutiny once an environmental impact report is released by the City Council in April.

But Higginson the city might not have the resources ahead to pursue redevelopment as avidly in the future as it might like, if efforts on the part of Gov. Jerry Brown to shutter local redevelopment agencies come to fruition.

He said the governor’s proposal to redirect the property taxes monopolized by redevelopment agencies to local schools will have an impact on what City Hall can do.

“What will occur is some sort of reform,” said Higginson, adding that Brown’s proposal would “start the dialog” on how these agencies will be transformed.

“They won’t be dissolved,” he said. But “we won’t be allowed to do what we doing today.”

Economic development is one of three areas where the city will put its focus in 2011, he said, The other areas will be the city’s sign ordinance and business zoning regulations.

“Signage is certainly something we need to look at,” he said, noting that it was a topic during a recent summit sponsored by the city and the chamber in late January to smooth relations between the business community and the city.

He said political signs would be included, as they have become “eye pollution.”

“It’s gotten too crazy,” he added,

Finally, he noted that “continuity” in the rules and regulations governing business would also be looked at closely.

The other speaker, Mickey Morera, an executive from the local office of commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield, was also upbeat, especially about the Poway Business Park, which has landed new tenants, despite the downturn.

“The year 2009 was a horrendous year for industrial,” he said, but added, “Poway has done well compared to the rest of the county, and that’s a positive sign.”

He said Poway’s vacancy rate for industrial properties was around 13 percent,  lower than surrounding areas, which have reached rates of 20 percent and higher.

He attributed that achievement to the expansion of such large firms as defense contractor General Atomics, which continued to grow during the slump because of increased defense spending.

The company’s expansions to new properties over the past two years, plus the growth of such Nexus Biosystems, which doubled the amount of space it leases to more than 60,000 square feet from 30,000 square feet “has solved some of our leasing problems.”

He applauded the arrival of green tech concern Energy Innovations to Poway last summer as another positive sign of the city’s attractiveness to new businesses.

Morera, echoing the remarks of the mayor, said Poway’s struggling retail sector would improve with the arrival of Toyota and Lowes, as well as the possible expansion of the exiting Walmart Store on Community Road.

Finally, he mentioned that several new stores, including the British-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, are looking at a portion of the 40,000-square-foot space left when Dixieline closed the doors to its ProBuild store in late December.

The chamber’s top executive Luanne Hulsizer emceed the meeting, which included brief remarks from current chamber board chair Linda Goycochea of US Bank.