Drug company to move to city
Pharmaceutical distributor's arrival may mean new jobs
By Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

The recent purchase of a large manufacturing building in east Camarillo may signal the arrival of new jobs to the city.

Fubarco Productions, a Ventura-based photo studio owned by Jim and Wanda Stroud, recently bought a 94,000 square-foot building located at 5187 Camino Ruiz from real estate investment firm PEGH Investments, according to Valerie Draeger of Triliad Development.

Draeger said it's likely that the building will be used by Golden State Medical Supplies, a prescription drug wholesale distributor also owned by the Strouds, as a packaging and shipping warehouse for the medical supply company.

Terms of the deal were kept confidential. Julie Henry, a realtor for RE/MAX of Valencia represented the Strouds, while Robert Flink of Lee and Associates brokered the deal for PEGH Investments.

It's unclear as to the number and types of jobs the business is expected to generate or when the medical supply company plans to move into the building. Calls made to the Strouds by the Camarillo Acorn were not returned.

Golden State Medical Supplies is a 21-year-old Ventura-based company that packages and distributes prescription drugs for a number of industry leaders, including AmerisourceBergen, McKesson and Cardinal Health, according to Golden State's website.

Entertainment giant Technicolor announced in January it plans to cut more than 600 jobs at its Camarillo location by the end of the year. The decision by Golden State Medical Supply to move into the unoccupied building less than a mile east from Technicolor is expected to offset those job losses.

Although Draeger said PEGH Investments- headed by Gene Haas, owner of Haas Automation- wasn't looking to sell the building, she said the deal was made because of the additional jobs it would bring to the city.

"We're not all that excited about selling real estate at this moment, but it's a relatively good deal," Draeger said of the sale set into motion in March. "It's a good business for the community, and I think that's why we decided to go forward with it."

The building has been empty since it was built in 2000.

PEGH investments owns two other large manufacturing buildings in the area- a neighboring 125,000 square-foot building on Camino Ruiz and another 110,000 square-foot building on Balboa Circle. The company owns about $55 million in Camarillo property, according to city records.

Even though both buildings are empty, New Focus, a hightech communications company, is still paying for a ten-year lease signed in January 2000 on the Camino Ruiz property, Draeger said.

In March 2000, New Focus was forced to abandon the building following the crash of dotcom companies around that same time, she said. For the past seven years, the San Jose tech company has been looking for another business to move into the empty building and take over their lease.

Because Technicolor plans to move its manufacturing facility to Mexico, it's expected to shutter some 900,000 square feet in industrial space. The closure means more than 1 million square feet of industrial space will be unoccupied within a mile radius.

Financial experts say finding tenants for large industrial space is difficult because of Camarillo's high cost of living. Manufacturers rely on a large workforce, which is difficult to find in Ventura County.

"It's just considered an expensive place," said Bill Watkins, executive director of the UCSB economic forecast project.

"Land is expensive, relative to lots of places in the United States, certainly relative to China," he said. "Labor is much more expensive relative to almost anywhere, and when you have those two things going against you, it makes it tough to compete."