Dole looks to be fruitful for San Fernando Valley.

Headquarters relocation seen as providing needed jobs

The recent decision of Dole Food Co. to locate its world headquarters in Westlake Village is seen as a potential boon to an area rich in talent and poor in jobs.

"I think it will be a big boost to the city's economy and that of the surrounding cities," said Kris Carraway, chairwoman of the Westlake Village Chamber of Commerce.

Dole Food, formerly Castle & Cooke Inc., announced Nov. 7 that it acquired 29.9 acres and a 404,000-square-foot manufacturing facility which Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp. has been trying unsuccessfully to sell for the past six years. For the past four years the property has been vacant.

"That property was truly a blight to the city," Carraway said. "It is run-down with weeds growing in the cracks and it wasn't being maintained as we feel it should have been."

To move the property, Unisys slashed the price from $18 million to "around or under $14 million," said Neil Nadler of Daum Commercial Industrial Real Estate, who represented Unisys.

Dole plans to build a 250,000- to 300,000-square-foot, two- or three-story campus complex, Nadler said.

Dole officials said 170 people currently work at the company's temporary headquarters, two buildings in Westlake Village which were leased in September. Of that total, 65 employees are recent hires who live in or around Westlake Village.

The company announced that it expects significant additional hires after the headquarters is completed. That could be crucial to helping to balance the area's residential community with jobs.

"There are many people here in middle management out of work. Our employment base is middle to upper management -- there are no factory workers here," said Carraway, who said that the community is hoping for a big expansion of the facility's work force eventually.

That fits well with the profile of Dole headquarters, which will largely house executives and will have no manufacturing jobs.

The transaction offers potential hope to counter the changing fortunes of the so-called Technology Corridor of the Ventura (101) Freeway, which over the last decade has seen light manufacturers move out and relatively little move in to a replace them.

In addition to Unisys' exit from the community, Cleveland-based Eaton Corp. by the end of the year will move its large AIL Systems Inc. defense contracting subsidiary out of a property owned by Eaton near the Dole site. AIL Systems occupies 57 percent of the property's 303,000-square foot building.

While manufacturers are moving out, a number of retailers also have expressed interest in setting up large discount retail centers in the city.

Six of the eight bidders for the Unisys property, in fact, were for community shopping centers, Nadler said.

The choice of Dole over the shopping center bidders was clearly one that will go over well with local residents, said Robert Theobald, Westlake Village's city planning director.

"There's sentiment in the community, and among city council members, that we do not want a big-box discount retail center," he said.

Big-box discount retailers -- such as Home Depot, the Price Club and Target -- are thriving amid the recession. But critics view them as detrimental to the upscale image to which Westlake Village aspires.

Carraway and other city boosters tout a number of attractions Westlake Village offers potential employers including less traffic, less congestion, more affordable homes and a large white collar labor force.

Dole executives apparently agreed.

In a press announcement, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David Murdock said the acquisition will allow Dole to save money by consolidating several of its divisions at one site. He added that another factor in Dole's decision was "the unusual number of highly talented people who live in the area."

In September, Dole and its subsidiary Dole Fresh Fruit Co. relocated their headquarters temporarily to two leased office buildings in Westlake Village. The Eaton property, which offers 35 acres directly west of the Unisys site, is still up for sale for an asking price of $35 million, or $1 million an acre, according to Mike Howard of Grubb & Ellis Co., who has been hired to find a buyer.

"This site can accommodate up to 1.5 million square feet of improvements (buildings) under current zoning," Howard said. "But we are suggesting about 600,000 square feet to any potential buyers."

That would still translate to roughly twice the current density. But Howard insisted there is room for expansion.