More Californians reverse course and head to Oklahoma

• October 13, 2010
  
  

  By Paul Wiseman
  USA TODAY
  10/12/2010

  OKLAHOMA CITY — Former Hollywood producer Neal Nordlinger, raising funds
  for a technology venture a couple of years ago, was stunned when a partner
  suggested locating the start-up here in Oklahoma’s capital and leaving Los
  Angeles behind: “I said: ‘Are you blankety-blank crazy? Oklahoma City? It’s
  a cow town.’ ”

  That was then. Now Nordlinger is running a software firm here and preaching
  the virtues of the heartland — low costs, unclogged streets, friendly
  people. “It’s a dream here,” he says. “The selling price of a house here
  would not be the down payment on a house in L.A. … People in L.A. do
  something for you because there’s something in it for them. Here, they
  genuinely want to help you succeed.”

  Nordlinger, who co-produced the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies Last Action
  Hero and Junior, is part of a mini-exodus: Since 1999, the number of
  Californians departing the Golden State for Oklahoma has outnumbered those
  going the opposite direction by more than 21,000, a reversal of the
  Depression-era migration west that John Steinbeck described in The Grapes
  of Wrath. In August, Boeing announced plans to shift 550 jobs from Long
  Beach to its complex next to Tinker Air Force Base outside Oklahoma City.

  The influx of Californians is a sign of Oklahoma’s growing economic
  prowess. The state was spared the worst of the nation’s deepest economic
  downturn since Steinbeck wrote his classic novel of Okies and their
  desperate journey from the Dust Bowl to the orchards of California.

  “We are outperforming the rest of the country,” says Mickey Hepner, an
  economist at the University of Central Oklahoma. “Our personal income is
  growing a little faster than elsewhere. … We didn’t suffer the depths of
  recession like the rest of the country, so we could bounce back a little
  more quickly.”

  Poised for growth
  Oklahoma’s unemployment rate was tied for 10th lowest in the country in
  August at 7%. Aaron Smith, senior economist for Moody’s Analytics, recently
  upgraded his forecast for the state, writing, “Oklahoma should be among the
  first to make the leap from recovery to expansion.”

  The state has been shielded from the economic tempest by high energy prices
  and by a stable housing market that didn’t go boom — or bust. But
  Oklahoma’s relative economic success and ability to attract jobs from
  California and elsewhere also reflect deliberate policy decisions to:

  •Tempt employers to come to Oklahoma or expand in the state — as long as
  they offer decent jobs with benefits. The state Commerce Department, for
  example, offers cash payments worth up to 5% of the new payroll when a
  company adds workers if the jobs pay the average county wage or $29,409 a
  year (whichever is lower) and come with basic health insurance.

  •Launch a state marketing campaign — Project Boomerang — to bring back
  skilled Oklahomans who left to seek out the bright lights of bigger cities.

  Oklahomans who departed after college or high school often feel homesick —
  and open to the sales pitch — as they get older and start thinking about
  buying a house or starting a family. “Oklahoma is one of those places you
  have to come from to think it’s beautiful,” says Jamey Jacob, professor of
  mechanical and aerospace engineering at Oklahoma State University.

  Rod Whitson was lured back three years ago to run an Oklahoma City bank
  after working in Los Angeles for 10 years. “After a while you kind of burn
  out on the traffic, you burn out on all the people, you burn out on the
  cost of everything,” he says.

  •Exploit the state’s competitive advantage in aerospace and defense
  technology. Oklahoma already has two of the world’s largest aircraft
  maintenance facilities in Tinker Air Force Base and American Airlines’
  maintenance hub in Tulsa.

  Oklahoma State University is emerging as a leader in unmanned aircraft,
  important to the U.S. military hunting terrorists in Afghanistan and
  Pakistan. The school last month announced a program in unmanned aviation:
  “We’ve been inundated with applications,” professor Jacob says. “We don’t
  know what we’re going to do.”

  Oklahoma State students have won seven first-place awards the past 11 years
  in a national unmanned aircraft competition.

  Oklahoma State also has set up a research-and-development arm, called
  University Multispectral Laboratories, in Ponca City to bring jobs to the
  state. The labs help government agencies and private contractors test and
  develop technology, mostly related to national security — unmanned
  aircraft, sensors that detect radiation, communications systems. Private
  companies pay fees but get to keep any patents the labs help them develop.
  The labs themselves — paying scientists more than $90,000 a year — provide
  a boost to the local economy.

  “We try to pay coastal salaries for living in the heartland,” says lab
  director D. Webster Keogh. “I’m trying to make Oklahoma a fly-to state
  instead of a fly-over state.”

  •Transform Oklahoma City, “a ghost town” when Whitson left in 1997, into a
  lively city where new downtown hotels are packed, young professionals crowd
  bars and restaurants in the restored Bricktown district and sports fans
  enjoy a hometown NBA franchise, a 12,000-seat minor-league baseball stadium
  and a world-class rowing and kayaking venue on a long-neglected stretch of
  riverfront.

  Oklahoma City’s makeover began with civic humiliation. The state capital
  went all out to win a huge United Airlines’ maintenance facility in 1991;
  voters even approved a 1-cent sales tax to finance a building for United.
  But the airline rejected Oklahoma City’s bid and picked Indianapolis
  instead. City elders asked United why they’d come up short. The answer,
  current Mayor Mick Cornett says, was hard to hear: United executives
  couldn’t imagine forcing their people to live in such a dull, run-down
  city.

  From that humbling experience Oklahoma City officials learned two things:
  Residents were willing to absorb tax increases to improve their city and
  attract employers, and Oklahoma City needed an overhaul — quick.

  Starting in 1993, voters OK’d a series of targeted sales taxes that raised
  hundreds of millions of dollars for civic improvements, including the
  construction of what is now the $34 million AT&T Bricktown Ballpark. Before
  the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS), “We didn’t have a city that was
  worth coming to visit,” says Cornett, who was a local television reporter
  when the makeover began. “The ballpark — that was undeniably cool. We had
  raised the level of what was expected” in a city that hadn’t contended for
  world-class status.

  MAPS money also turned a 7-mile stretch of river from little more than a
  weed-lined drainage ditch through downtown into an official U.S. Olympic
  training site for rowing, canoeing and kayaking. “The joke is, we used to
  mow it, and now we row it,” says Fritz Kiersch, a former Hollywood director
  (the 1984 horror film Children of the Corn) who now teaches film at
  Oklahoma City University. The city’s status as a water sports mecca has
  lured people such as Jen Burke, a sprint kayaker who came from San Diego to
  train for international competition, including the 2012 Olympics. “It’s a
  perfect place to be,” she says.

  For years, Cornett had unsuccessfully lobbied the NBA for an Oklahoma City
  basketball franchise. When Hurricane Katrina tore up the Gulf Coast in
  2005, the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets needed a temporary home. Oklahoma City
  took them in for two seasons, proved it could be a big league city and won
  the Seattle Supersonics franchise — renamed the Thunder — with star forward
  Kevin Durant.

  For all its efforts, Oklahoma still has work to do. In a ranking of state
  business climates this year, CNBC put Oklahoma at No. 1 for lowest cost of
  living but 25th overall, 41st for quality of life and 40th for education.
  Few Oklahomans would challenge the verdict on their schools. “The public
  school system needs help,” says Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr.

  Lifestyle pluses
  But Oklahoma boosters, including those who have relocated from California
  and other states, defend the quality of life here. “I’ve spent my career
  traveling the financial capitals of the world, and this state can really
  hold its own,” says Oklahoma Commerce Secretary Natalie Shirley, formerly a
  mutual fund industry lawyer in Washington, D.C.

  Mike Emmelhainz, who directs Boeing operations in Oklahoma City, says his
  neighbors welcomed his family with a fried-chicken dinner when they moved
  here last year. What’s more, he says, “I’m not spending what little free
  time I have in traffic.”

  Christine Berney, who grew up in California and Oregon and now oversees
  community relations for the NBA’s Thunder, says her West Coast friends used
  to tease her and her screenwriter husband about moving to the heartland.
  “They thought we were insane,” she says. “Then we sent them the flier of
  the house we bought. They pretty much didn’t say anything after that.”

  No wonder: The median sales price of an existing single-family home in
  Oklahoma City was $150,000 last quarter — and $340,000 in Los Angeles,
  according to the National Association of Realtors.

  “People are very friendly. People are not guarded,” Berney says. “Nobody
  honks. In L.A., if you stayed at a stoplight more than two seconds, people
  would be out on the street banging on your car.”

  Newcomers say ambitious people can make a bigger impact faster in Oklahoma
  than they could in bigger, busier places. JD Merryweather’s photography
  studio struggled in Santa Fe but took off in Oklahoma City. Now he’s
  running Coop Ale Works, a microbrewery that was profitable three months
  after opening last year and is expecting to double its revenue this year.

  Christy Counts returned to Oklahoma City from California six years ago,
  determined to start a Humane Society branch and head back to the West
  Coast. She’s still here. “You can spend 15 years (elsewhere) trying to make
  a name for yourself,” she says, “or you can spend two years (in Oklahoma
  City), work your a— off and make a difference.”

  Sometimes the newcomers still miss the West Coast. Kayaker Burke longs for
  the beach. Former producer Nordlinger, whose Search and Clear firm makes
  software that lets people share documents, says he can’t find a top-notch
  Italian restaurant or a decent Jewish deli. And as much as he loves
  Oklahoma and admires the Thunder, he can’t help himself: He still roots for
  the Lakers.

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