UNITY FOUND IN DIVERSITY BLACK BUSINESS GROUP FORMS IN VALLEY.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- Moving her insurance company to Santa Clarita was both good and bad for JoAnne Lindsey.

It was 1989, and to the black businesswoman, the city seemed overwhelmingly white. She felt welcome in the city, and her business thrived, but she missed being with other black Americans.

Now, with more black people moving to Santa Clarita, things are changing. Lindsey recently joined a newly formed group: the Black Business Committee.

``It's really nice to have people of African-American descent coming together,'' she said.

Lindsey said the committee, which has more than 30 members and is part of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, is the first black business group she has known in the valley.

``I think that it does make that statement that there is an African-American community here in the Santa Clarita Valley,'' she said. ``And that says something because you have to be able to be at least middle class to live in this valley.''

In 2004, an estimated 2.5 percent of the city's population was African-American, according to Applied Geographics. By comparison, nearly 10 percent of the population was African-American in the county as a whole.

The Black Business Committee was started in September by Kacey Thorps, a real estate agent with Keller Williams VIP Properties in Valencia. Her husband, Sean Thorps, is a board member with the group and works as a loan officer with RDM Lending.

``Everybody in our group is kind of doing their own thing,'' said Kacey Thorps, 37. ``All entrepreneurial and very successful business people.''

Thorps herself also has an online travel business, and she used to do wedding videos.

The Black Business Committee, with its motto ``Expanding Your Horizons,'' has a goal of helping new and established black business people network. The group will also give scholarships to black students and offer business loans to fledgling businesses.

``There's some cliques out here, and you have to have some place to go,'' Kacey Thorps said. ``That's why I created the BBC, because there's only a few black people here.''

The group's board members run a wide gamut of different kinds of businesses and backgrounds.

Board member Courtney Wilson left Detroit for California's sunny climes after paying too much money to have someone shovel snow off her roof. Now, the former pharmaceutical representative owns a business called SCV Good to Go, which delivers food from restaurants to homes and businesses with a staff of ``mobile waiters.''

Another board member, Anthony Miller, runs Fire Mountain Beverage Co., a publicly traded company based in Valencia that makes beverages for sale through stores, schools and distributors. Miller co-chairs the Black Business Committee.

Lindsey, 53, is also in the insurance business, and she has seen her self-owned company grow threefold since she moved the business to Santa Clarita from Beverly Hills.

The valley is becoming more diverse, she said. ``I look around Santa Clarita, and I don't find it to be predominantly Caucasian anymore,'' she said. ``We're a wonderful melting pot culturally.''

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IF YOU GO

Membership in the Black Business Committee is open to anyone, regardless of race. The committee will have a mixer at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 10 at Tropical Smoothie Cafe, 28255 Newhall Ranch Road, Valencia. Information: Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, [phone].

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2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Kacey Thorps, at right with Claudia Hawkins, is a real estate agent with Keller Williams VIP Properties who started the Black Business Committee.

(2) Members of the Black Business Committee, from left front, Kacey Thorps and Sean Thorps, and from left back, Courtney Wilson, Harry Reed, Claudia Hawkins and Courvan Milby.

David Crane/Staff Photographer

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IF YOU GO (see text)