From education to healthcare, Vallejo’s business community is booming
When Hollywood studio manager Mark Walter decided to open a Bay Area production facility last year, he discovered Vallejo’s Mare Island.
A joint venture between Film Mare Island and Los Angelesbased Cinelease, the soundstage on the former naval base had only been open for two days when a Paramount TV production moved in. Once its crew discovered what downtown Vallejo also had to offer, five days of filming turned into five months.
“To have them be that impressed with the area and the island means a lot,” Walter said.
These days, a big-budget movie and the second season of “13 Reasons Why” currently in production keeps more than 600 workers and vendors busy on any given day on Mare Island, and the Cinelease venture is also just one of the 110 businesses bringing new energy to the former naval shipyard established in 1854, the first on the West Coast, and decommissioned in 1996.
Just like the families who have made Vallejo the nation’s second hottest real estate market, businesses are discovering the city has a lot to offer, from its industrial past to its innovative future, without the high prices of the rest of the Bay Area.
Local developer and fifthgeneration Vallejo resident Dennis Brinson points to several of the city’s “compelling resources” as drivers in its booming home sales and job growth.
“Vallejo is a natural transit hub for the area, from rail to buses that connect to BART to ferries to San Francisco and the major highways of 37, 29, 780, 680 and 80, and pricing on homes is half of what you’d experience in San Francisco, which is a pleasurable ferry ride away, or by car right down 80,” he said. “But the nuts and bolts of why a new economy employer would be here is our unique infrastructure. ”
That includes “big power grids” from the former nuclear submarine base, ideal for companies that require substantial amounts of energy.
“There are plenty of new economy applications that are pretty power-hungry,” Brinson said.
Vallejo also has “an incredible water supply — we sell water to other cities and we have 25 percent unused water treatment capacity,” he said.
This helped the city attract Napa Smith’s multimillion-dollar brewery and taproom to Sonoma Boulevard (Highway 29), according to Brinson.
A public-private partnership with Inyo Networks, launched in summer 2017, is utilizing an existing city fiber network to provide gigabit internet services to businesses at unparalleled rates. This new public internet initiative is enabling Vallejo to significantly lower the operating costs for businesses and employers in the city.
Vallejo’s resources also include ready-to-develop sites on its scenic waterfront and in downtown, as well as the now-private shipyards on Mare Island, said James Cooper, president and CEO of the city’s Chamber of Commerce.
This year more than a million ferry passengers will land at the waterfront, which regularly hosts festivals and lies only two blocks from a downtown with recently improved lighting, sidewalks and security.
“There’s a real ambience that’s being created and developed,” Cooper said. “That’s where the opportunity lies.”
Employers are also discovering Vallejo’s rich human assets, in part created by the city’s institutes of higher education.
“In a very broad sense, Vallejo is a college town,” said Bob Arp, vice president for university of advancement at CSU Maritime Academy, also known as Cal Maritime, which educates 1,100 undergraduates on its 89-acre waterfront campus. Vallejo also boasts Solano Community College, which recently added a 400-student auto tech program to its local campus, and Touro University, which trains its 1,465 students for health care professions.
At the West Coast’s only degree-granting maritime academy, Arp notes, “we produce graduates that not only go to sea as deck officers or engineers, we’re producing people who are facilities engineers or mechanical engineers, who are more than meeting the needs of local business, including manufacturers.”
Nearly 95 percent of students are employed upon graduation, he said.
“We have a growing number of internships and summer placements, not only within the shipping industry, but with a wide variety of businesses and opportunities,” Arp said.
Joanna Altman, the city’s public information officer, hails Touro University, Solano Community College and Cal Maritime as “key partners” in Vallejo’s economic development.
“The city continues to find ways to support them as they grow, as all three institutions have plans to double enrollment, increase their programs and grow their campuses,” she said.
One of Vallejo’s largest employers is healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, which numbers 4,300 employees in the city, and a total of 6,900 in Solano and Napa counties combined. The diversity in cultural backgrounds and skill sets of Vallejo’s workers makes the city “very attractive,” according to Nor Jemjemian, senior vice president and area manager for Kaiser Permanente’s Napa Solano Area.
“From a labor standpoint we’re able to attract a variety of levels of workforce,” he said. “From the educational institutions around us, we can get anyone from nurses to physicians to the technically trained, to storeroom workers and receptionists.”
The city’s wide array of ethnic groups is also reflected in the company, much to its benefit, Jemjemian adds.
“Kaiser Permanente is known industry-wide as the No. 2 diverse company in the country. Vallejo offers so much diversity that we’re able to bring in a diverse workforce,” Jemjemian said. “It affects the quality of care because there are different viewpoints and different cultural practices ... and if you have a diverse workforce in your hospital, you’ll be able to articulate and connect with the individuals you’re serving in those hospitals.”
City officials recently decided to showcase the human and physical resources of Vallejo and its business-friendly policies in a new portal, www.choosevallejo.com, and a YouTube video that reflects many business leaders’ enthusiasm for the city’s positive economic climate.
“The Vallejo business boom is not hype, it’s the reality,” Jemjemian said. “Now people are discovering it, I’m very confident we’re going to see more major organizations here, whether in manufacturing, IT or service. The transformation of Vallejo is happening today.”