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Weak Investments

Tribune photo by CHRIS URSO

Vortex, which manufactures sprockets, handlebars and other parts for racing motorcycles, moved last year to its new location along Gunn Highway in Odessa. The $1.8 million the company spent in the move is part of the $56 million in total investments made by companies in Pasco County last year, a record.

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 10, 2008

ODESSA - A decade after setting up shop in west Pasco, Matt Griffin and Dan Geberth decided last year to move out of their cramped manufacturing quarters at the West Pasco Industrial Park.

The owners of Vortex Racing, which machines parts for racing motorcycles, spent $1.8 million to relocate to a larger space in the Suncoast Industrial Park on Gunn Highway.

The new space gave the growing company room to spread out, increase its inventory and reduce the back orders that had plagued its customers until then.

"There's no telling what we could do now," Griffin, Vortex's president, said recently.

Vortex was one of more than two dozen manufacturers that invested more than $56 million in new construction in Pasco County last year, a historic high for an increasingly urban county still saddled with a reputation for ranches and retirees.

Despite the record amount spent on job creation, Pasco's economic boosters are wearing frowns.

"Last year really wasn't as good a year as we had thought it would be," said Mary Jane Stanley, president and chief executive officer of the Pasco Economic Development Council.

After years of dramatic growth, manufacturing investment is leveling off.

Stanley said the slumping housing market and national credit crunch are making it harder to attract new employers.

The development council is a nonprofit group focused on bringing manufacturers and similar major employers, so-called primary industries, to the county. In recent years, it has helped bring a number of expansion-minded companies north from Pinellas County, among them printer Eastern Ribbon & Roll and flight-simulation company Opinicus.

During the past five years or so, industrial investment in Pasco has grown sixfold from a little less than $9 million in 2003.

Starting last summer, however, Stanley's group saw a sharp drop in businesses looking to locate in Pasco. The drop-off mirrored the slump in new-home construction, council new-industry recruiter Bryan Kamm said.

"The number of inquiries we saw before - a lot of them based on the construction industry - we don't get them any more," Kamm said.

Manufacturing and distribution companies not connected to the housing market continue to knock on Pasco's door, but the number of prospects has shrunk dramatically, he said.

"For every 10 to 15 leads we may have had last year, five to 10 were good ones. For every 10 to 15 leads now, about two are good," Kamm said.

Despite the slump in prospective employers, Stanley and her staff remain confident Pasco will be ready to reel in major jobs-makers once the economic outlook improves.

The employers still looking at Pasco represent larger companies offering higher wages than have historically come to the county, Stanley said, though she declined to name any of the companies now being courted.

Higher wages mean employees have more disposable income to pump into the stores, restaurants and dentist offices that continue to sprout even as residential growth sags, Stanley said.

Pasco County boosters continue to hunt for the company looking to build a corporate campus on some of the hundreds of acres of land earmarked for office parks and light industry during last year's revisions to the county's master land-use plan.

When that moment comes, Stanley expects those offices to sprout at State Road 54 and the Suncoast Parkway. Land on three of the junction's four corners has been set aside for corporate-style development.

Channelside developer Mike Hogan moved his offices last year from downtown Tampa to NorthPointe, his business park at the southeast corner of the interchange. Stanley's group moved to NorthPointe last year from the county's aging Central Pasco Government Center on U.S. 41 partly to showcase Pasco's potential for corporate growth.

Developer Doug Weiland won approval last month for Ashley Glen, a complex that promises to add nearly 2 million square feet of high-rise office space and nearly a half-million square feet of commercial space to the northeast corner of the Suncoast-S.R. 54 interchange.

Three factors eventually may tip the scales in favor of a larger office complex in Pasco:

•Southern Pasco lies within easy reach of the band of high-end executive housing that runs across northern Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Corporate growth along S.R. 54 could put those executives closer to their offices.

•Unlike its neighbors, Pasco still has large tracts of land set aside and ready to develop for office complexes and light manufacturing - much of it within easy reach of the Suncoast Parkway, Interstate 75 and Interstate 4.

•More than half of Pasco's work force commutes out of the county for work. Recent county estimates suggest that could be as many as 80,000 people for a prospective employer to tempt with employment closer to home, Stanley said.

For now, however, Pasco's economic advocates must wait out reluctant companies.

"We do have someplace to put every one of those businesses," Stanley said. "It's part of their corporate strategy to pull back for six months."

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski @tampatrib.com.

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