CITYWIDE From the exclamation point of Yahoo! to the red, green, blue and yellow lettering of Google, Santa Monica has been hacked into... by Internet and technology companies, that is.
Santa Monica and other Westside communities like Marina del Rey and Culver City are crawling with large Internet and technology companies, big names like Google, Yahoo!, MySpace, Symantec, Activision and Experian Interactive all call the city by the sea their home.
The list of reasons why the tech companies opted to take up residency in Santa Monica is a long one, ranging from the obvious — incredible amenities — to the not-so-transparent — having acquired a business that happened to be located in Santa Monica.
Experian Interactive opened in Santa Monica in May of 2005 after it acquired LowerMyBills.com, which was already located in the city. Rated in the top 15 Internet companies, Experian Interactive — parent company to LowerMyBills.com, PriceGrabber.com and ClassesUSA.com — plans to expand its current office space in the Yahoo Center in the eastern part of the city. The office currently houses LowerMyBills.com and Experian is working to relocate PriceGrabber.com from Westwood to Santa Monica.
“Santa Monica is a great place to live and work,” said Ed Ojdana, chief executive officer for Experian Interactive. “We’re looking for talented people and I think Santa Monica is one of those areas that really attracts those kinds of individuals.”
With the beach, world famous restaurants and entertainment options, the city has the amenities that attract top notch candidates, Ojdana said.
Perhaps what makes the Westside so desirable for these tech companies is the talent pool from local universities like UCLA, Loyola Marymount and USC. It’s a talent pool crawling with young graduates eager to jump into the corporate lifestyle.
“You see that anywhere you have a major research-oriented university that provides a lot of intellectual capital,” said Dr. Jason Cong, the chair of the Computer Science Department at UCLA. “If you look at Southern California, you see we’re in a very unique position with UCLA, USC, Caltech... If you go further, you have UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara all within driving distance.”
Many students from UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering find their way to jobs at Symantec, Yahoo and Google.
It’s a similar story across town at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, where several of the tech companies have extended invitations for students to visit their offices in Santa Monica.
“Proximity is definitely a big incentive,” said Gerard Medioni, chair of the Computer Science Department at USC and director of the Games Institute.
Medioni has seen a similar trend arising with the video game industry, with Activision opening an office in Sunset Park and EA Games situated near Loyola Marymount. Since USC began offering a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a specialization in games, video game companies have actively recruited at the school for employees, Medioni said.
Many of the students and professors from the local colleges also end up opening their own start-up technology companies on the Westside. Cong was a co-founder of a start-up that was later acquired by a Bay Area company.
The city and its beautiful beach views serves as inspiration for many people who work in the information technology and entertainment industries, said Miriam Mack, manager of the economic development division at the city of Santa Monica. The city is home to many people who work on the Westside and those people want to work close to their homes, Mack said.
In fact, the existence of technology offices in Santa Monica has more to do with executives and company decision-makers being close to home and amenities than anything else, according to Matthew Miller, the president of CRESA Partners, a real estate firm that works with technology companies. The firm represents almost all the major tech names in Santa Monica.
There is nothing unique about Santa Monica, Miller said. Technology companies are popping up all over the place in cities like San Diego and Santa Barbara. El Segundo, the South Bay and Marina del Rey are also home to dozens of companies. Symantec, which has been located at its Broadway office for 17 years, will move to Culver City next year, where it is building a new facility.
Santa Monica became an attractive option because it was one of the few places in the Westside where large blocks of space was available, Miller said.
But as real estate prices increase, technology companies might start opting for cheap-er rent.
“If you look at where people want to live and if you look at where home prices are the highest, it’s pretty well correlated,” Miller said.
The same goes for commercial real estate. “Rents are going up everywhere and Santa Monica is among the highest,” he said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 28, 2007. Read the original PDF.