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In the thirty-four years since 1990, thousands of companies have left California for more affordable cities in other states. The magnitude of these departures has been well documented in the media, with major news outlets referring to it as a “corporate exodus.” Some CEOs have cited strict local regulations and cost of living increases as the cause of the migration, but additional factors have played into it. Notably, more than half of these companies headed to the same three cities: Austin, Phoenix, and—most often—Las Vegas. What was it that made these cities appear more ideal than California? And do they actually live up to all the hype? As is sometimes the case, the headlines don’t tell the whole story. Ultimately, it all came down to cost, or, at least, assumed cost. These cities seemed “more affordable” to strained companies seeking relief. Sure, when assessed on a single issue like office rent, Arizona is cheaper than California. However, conducting business involves more than just paying for office space. Claremont McKenna College’s Rose Institute of State and Local Government recently released their 2024 Cost of Doing Business Survey. The study included 216 cities in the Western United States, 174 of which are in California. The cities were ranked from least to most expensive based on several factors: sales tax, utility tax, business license fees, average office rent, FBI crime index, median home value, and minimum wage. Each city was assigned a score between one and five, with five being the costliest. Two of the Survey’s top 30 least expensive cities are part of our region: Menifee and Wildomar. We’ll highlight the significance of that soon. First, let’s look at how the Temecula Valley stacks up against a few of these popular relocation destinations.  Our region was given an overall composite ranking of 2.25, which came in lower than Austin’s (2.29). This is important because a relocation within California to the Temecula Valley would cost substantially less than a relocation out of state. The companies that left for Austin may have had the impression that Texas was more affordable than California, but it’s clear from the comparison chart that they’re competitive. If these companies had conducted a thorough analysis of what our region has to offer versus the alternative, they likely would never have left the state. After all, Southern California is home to the second-largest logistics and distribution hub in the country as well as more than 30 colleges and universities educating more than 110,000 graduates a year.
We can look at the individual numbers to determine how these cities performed in the study. Taxes are a major consideration when starting a business. While our combined sales tax rate was higher than that of Austin, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, it was lower than both Denver’s and Seattle’s. Our region is not subject to utility taxes, while Austin, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Seattle pay a rate that ranges from 0.58% to 6%, which can greatly impact a manufacturing facility’s bottom line. Establishing a business can be expensive, but it depends entirely upon where you set up shop. Although Austin, Denver, and Phoenix don’t charge fees for business licenses, they can range from $200-$500 in Las Vegas and from $68-$3,011 (depending on taxable revenue) in Seattle. Meanwhile, our regional average business license fee is only $74.80. Renting office space is more expensive than Temecula Valley’s average price in all but one of these cities. Our average office rent per square foot is $28.87, while Austin ($41.81), Denver ($36.45), Las Vegas ($30.23) and Seattle ($43.13) all charge more. Only Phoenix beat our average cost by $2.26 per square foot ($26.61). Median home price varies between locations, but not as much as you might think. Las Vegas has the lowest at $435,000, followed by Phoenix at $453,000 and Austin at $455,000. Denver is next at $560,934, with our region at $630,500 and Seattle at $885,000. Like in many other desirable locations, home prices in the Temecula Valley have risen since the pandemic, as people have discovered the high quality of life, amount of open space, and success rates of schools. Throughout the region, thousands of homes are under construction in all categories, including apartments, townhomes, starter homes, and larger estates. This has contributed to holding prices steady while keeping up with the ongoing demand. Naturally, the minimum wage varies across the country, largely due to the cost of living. While our regional average is $16 per hour, Seattle’s minimum wage law guarantees their workers at least $17.25 per hour and $19.97 for workers in certain sectors. And as of January 1st, 2024, Denver’s minimum wage is $18.29 plus CPI. On the other end of the pay scale, Phoenix’s minimum wage is $14.35, Las Vegas’s is $12, and Austin’s is a mere $7.25. Thus far in our exploration, Phoenix is beating us in the numbers game. But there are areas where they didn’t come out on top. The local crime index is an important consideration for any move, and our region has the lowest rate of these cities. This is one area where Phoenix can’t measure up to the Temecula Valley. Our crime index rate is 22.19 while Phoenix’s is 37.36. In fact, the crime index rate in all five of the cities we’ve covered is markedly higher than ours. The Temecula Valley’s safety and its family-oriented communities are two key factors that have contributed to the expansion of its neighborhoods and businesses for years. How else is our region a better choice for companies than Phoenix? When it comes to access to business capital, the Southern California region has more to offer. In CNBC’s 2023 Top States for Business ranking, California received an A+ in access to capital and was ranked #1 in the nation while Arizona received a C+ and was ranked 17th. Statewide, California had $58B in venture capital investments for 2023. More specifically, Southern California raised $12.3B in venture capital while Phoenix merely raised $1.6B. Globally, venture capital prospects decreased following the 2021 pandemic boom. Nationally, states saw an average decrease of 28% in venture capital in Q1 2024. However, Arizona was hit particularly hard, raising only $273.9M in Q1 2024 compared to $636.7M in Q1 2023. What about the local workforce? Our region is more educated: census data shows that 89.34% of our residents have a high school diploma compared to 83.9% of Phoenix’s. We’re also better equipped to accommodate higher learners given our proximity to colleges, universities, and research institutes. According to the U.S. News & World Report, five of the nation’s Top Ten public universities are in California. Additionally, we provide upskilling resources to the community through workforce training funds that cover costs for training new employees and upskilling existing ones. The Temecula Valley also has the distinction of having over 122,000 residents who commute out of the area each day. While this may not sound like an advantage, it means that employers don’t have to look far to find highly skilled workers who would gladly give up their four-hour daily commute to work closer to home. As mentioned earlier, Menifee and Wildomar made the Survey’s list of the top thirty least expensive cities, with Menifee at number 12 and Wildomar at number 27. As the largest city in our region and one of the fastest growing in the state, Menifee has over a million square feet of industrial space in development. It continues to be a top destination for families seeking a safe community where they can buy an affordable home. Wildomar represents one of the only cities with commercial development available on the 15 freeway. A quiet community with huge room for growth, it’s extremely accessible yet still provides the opportunity to live a rural ranch lifestyle. These two cities have helped to put our region on the map, and now that they’re among the list of least expensive cities for companies, they are right on the money. California is a large state that is home to a richly diverse group of regions, cities, people, and assets. While the media might like to paint the entire state as too expensive for businesses, our region is seeing record growth at prices that are clearly competitive. We remain an ideal area for companies to thrive while providing access to world-class talent, infrastructure, and logistics, safe communities, high-quality education and—inarguably—the best weather in the country. It seems there are more than just a few good reasons to choose Temecula Valley.
 The EDC is proud to announce that we recently won a CALED Award for our Commuter Workforce Campaign. Although many of our members and community partners already know its origin story, some of you may not be aware of how the campaign performed or its impact on our local economy. I’m proud of all the efforts of our staff and supporters to make it successful, and I’m eager to share the story with you.
Available workforce is perhaps the top issue for communities and employers across the country. While many communities lack enough workers, our region has a unique challenge: 70 percent of our workforce leaves every day to work in other communities. The idea for the Commuter Workforce Campaign came from the need to address this issue. In addition to the toll it took on commuters, the daily exodus further strained our local employers, who were already struggling to fill vacancies. The campaign was designed to educate our workforce on the career opportunities within our region and to encourage them to apply for local jobs. This issue had existed for years, but the details weren’t entirely clear. While we knew how many people were commuting, we didn’t know much else about them. We didn’t know which industries they worked in, their average wages, their level of education, or any other demographics. Getting this information would be crucial to crafting our business recruitment message. When Site Selectors were told that we had an available local workforce who wanted to ditch their commutes, they immediately asked who these workers were, but we couldn’t tell them. We contacted countless data agencies to try to find out, but the data didn’t exist yet. So the only option was to gather the data ourselves. Using On The Map data from the U.S. Census, we were able to track where people were commuting to, down to the census tract level. We could then use a map search to see which employers were in those higher cluster areas of commuter destinations. Once we knew where these commuters worked, we could research their employers’ available jobs and average wages and compare them to the job openings we had in our region. With this information, we deployed geo-targeted Google ads to the census tracts where we saw the most commuters with the highest number of equivalent job openings. We went into it feeling unsure of what type of response we would get. The ads resulted in a very high click-through rate, which allowed us to collect data on demographics like age and gender as well as where the viewers searched for open positions on our SoCal Jobs page. The data collection for the campaign started in January of 2023 and the first Google Ad campaign launched that July. Throughout the campaign, we kept our members updated on the data gathered and how the ad performed. For the first two weeks of its run, we had 45,500 impressions and 721 clicks to the website for a 1.5% click-through rate. The average click-through rate for that type of ad is only .46%. These two weeks of campaigning cost us a mere $352.99. Being able to bring nearly one thousand active job seekers directly to our local employers’ job boards for less than $400 was an incredible value, especially when compared to the cost of hosting a job fair and its low potential for ROI. The 45,000 views that the campaign brought in provided additional exposure for the region, the EDC, and our local employers. We’re now running monthly campaigns to continue gathering data and market job openings to support our local employers. Thus far, the feedback has been very positive, and we’re looking to increase this effort to reach even more commuters. Through the success of this campaign, we’ve gained support from our local partners in growing this initiative by leveraging additional dollars to fund it. The campaign only worked due to the valuable insight from local employers on their struggles with hiring and their hardest-to-fill positions. We anticipate the campaign will continue to yield benefits for our employers by filling their open vacancies, allowing them to service more clients and reducing the daytime leakage. Daytime leakage means fewer dollars spent locally. Reducing this by keeping our workers local means we’re not only helping employers with their initial workforce issue, but also keeping more dollars here to further strengthen our economy. I’m incredibly proud of my team for taking on this complex issue, breaking it down into achievable parts, and executing a plan that has resulted in measurable success. As economic developers, it’s our duty to help our communities and businesses overcome challenges that they can’t on their own. The issue of local workers commuting out of our region is not entirely solved, but we’ve identified a path forward. Utilizing all that we’ve learned and the growing interest in partnership to foster this effort will help us continue to see a positive impact on our neighbors, communities, businesses, and the region.
 PV Circonomy and EasyCycle along with a team from UCR and EDC Executive Director, Connie Stopher EasyCycle Online will be located in the Temecula Valley Entrepreneurs Exchange (TVE2) while PV Circonomy will establish its first U.S. processing facility in Menifee.
Temecula, CA – May 28th, 2024 – PV Circonomy and EasyCycle Online, two Taiwanese green technology companies, announced plans to develop their first U.S. processing facility and office in Southwest Riverside County. EasyCycle Online has created an innovative AI-driven software that, when paired with the advanced solar panel recycling hardware of PV Circonomy, will bring a new industry to the United States. PV Circonomy CEO Dr. Andrew Hung expressed his excitement about the announcement. “PV Circonomy’s mission toward a circular economy will not only benefit local communities and California, but throughout the United States. “PV Circonomy’s automated solar recycling process recovers 99% of solar panel materials without using chemicals, water, or creating high carbon emissions, which paves the way for a truly sustainable solar recycling economy. “We chose our location in Menifee, California in part because of the concentration of the solar economy in the United States, but also due to the resources and assistance that was provided to us. It is clear that it’s a community ready to welcome new businesses.” TSGC is the Taiwan-based parent company of PV Circonomy. TSGC co-founder Dr. Yaw-Shyan Fu shared more about the opportunities of this new technology. “There are thousands of different types of solar panels in use around the world, making recycling very difficult. The collaborative efforts of our team with organizations in Asia, Europe, and the U.S., in combination with our innovative technology that utilizes AI, opens up numerous academic opportunities to improve the circularity of the solar industry.” EasyCycle Online will initially be located at the Temecula Valley Entrepreneurs Exchange (TVE2), establishing its office location while PV Circonomy sets up its first U.S.-based processing location in Menifee. In addition to their manufacturing presence in the region, they are fostering research and development partnerships with the University of California, Riverside. EasyCycle Online CEO Vincent Cheng elaborated on their role in this project: “EasyCycle Online represents the customer-facing software component of solar decommissioning. Our aim is to make the process easy for both residential solar users and industrial-scale users to decommission their panels in an environmentally responsible way. The City of Temecula and the EDC have been incredibly helpful to us in establishing new roots here in California.” Rodolfo Torres, Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development at the University of California, Riverside, shared his thoughts on the project: “UC Riverside, in partnership with the Economic Development Coalition and other agencies in Riverside County, will leverage our strong research foundation to innovate and collaborate with PV Circonomy and EasyCycle Online. Together, we're accelerating green technology, fostering growth, and contributing to the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem. With a focus on sustainability and innovation, our research will drive breakthroughs in renewable energy and environmental conservation. Through our SoCal OASIS™ initiative, UC Riverside is strongly committed to continuing collaboration with our regional partners to attract more companies to Inland Southern California.” “California is leading the way in green technology, and we are excited to welcome both PV Circonomy and EasyCycle Online to Southern California,” said Economic Development Coalition Executive Director Connie Stopher. “The local and statewide partnerships, including the access to talent and university collaborations, were key to the success of this project. The technology they bring to the state and the U.S. will be critical as our solar infrastructure ages and we look to add more renewable energy to the grid.” The Economic Development Coalition (EDC) works with communities in the Southwest Riverside region of Southern California to attract new businesses and grow existing industries. Green Technology is one key sector that they have strategically targeted. “The City of Menifee has strategically invested in economic development initiatives such as our Innovation District, which has become a hub for tech companies including PV Circonomy,” said Mayor Bill Zimmerman. “Menifee continues to be a growing destination for major corporations with ample supply to an educated workforce, proximity to major metropolitan areas, and available land opportunities near the interstate.” The TVE2 is a business incubator and regional resource center that fosters business growth and economic vitality for entrepreneurs. Additionally, the TVE2 houses the Inland Empire Small Business Development Center and offices of the EDC. "We are thrilled to welcome EasyCycle Online to the Temecula Valley Entrepreneur's Exchange and commend their groundbreaking software,” remarked Mary Cervantes, Manager of the TVE2. “Their innovative technology is not only revolutionizing the industry but also contributing to a more sustainable future for our community and beyond." For more information about PV Circonomy, visit their website: https://www.tsgc.com.tw/en/home/Recycler#RecyclerIntroSec For more information about EasyCycle Online, visit their website: https://www.easycycle.online/en To learn more about the Economic Development Coalition and the Southwest Riverside County region, please visit us online at www.edcswca.com. About PV Circonomy Founded in Taiwan, PV Circonomy is the U.S. location of TSGC. TSGC’s purpose is to eliminate the environmental impact of EOL PV’s and benefit the public, and accelerating energy transition toward a better future. TSGC works to solve the current impact of solar recyclability, maximizing the value of the reclaimed materials and helping create a sustainable solar future. About EasyCycle Online, Inc. EasyCycle Online, Inc. is a dynamic startup founded in 2018 in Taiwan, with a primary focus on advancing AI technology and ensuring the utmost in data security and management. This technology is paired with the commitment to driving innovative AI-driven solutions to redefine the landscape of solar panel recycling. About the Economic Development Coalition The Economic Development Coalition is a non-profit organization that works with the public and private sectors throughout Southern California, formed to unite public and private stakeholders to leverage the region’s competitive advantage, attract business, and supporting a high-quality of life. The EDC serves the cities of Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Menifee, Temecula, and the unincorporated areas of Southwest Riverside County.
Project Sun AnnouncementWe are honored to finally reveal that Project Sun is made up of two Taiwanese companies, PV Circonomy and EasyCycle. The hardware and software companies are the first of their kind in the United States. Their innovative technology allows for the recycling of up to 99% of the material from solar panels, something that is not possible anywhere else. PV Circonomy will be located in Menifee and EasyCycle will be based out of the TVE2 Building in Temecula. Project Sun is an excellent example of regional collaboration. Thank you to all our community partners who made this recruitment a success. The EDC was introduced to PV Circonomy and EasyCycle less than a year ago at SelectUSA in Washington D.C. After their visit, the companies were impressed not only by the region but also by the services they received at the EDC. Following their visit, they invited our Executive Director, Connie Stopher CEcD, to Taiwan to meet with fellow innovative Taiwanese companies interested in expanding to the US. The past year of collaboration has been fruitful for all parties involved; we look forward to all the future success PV Circonomy and EasyCycle will achieve here.  Innovation MonthApril is Riverside County's Innovation Month. Southwest Riverside County will host a Quick Pitch Competition on Tuesday, April 16th, at the Lake Elsinore Storm Stadium Taproom from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The first-place winner will receive $1,000 and advance to the county pitch competition on April 30th. To apply, fill out this application and email it to [email protected] by Tuesday, April 9th, 2024.  Mayor's Tech Idea ExchangeIt’s time for our next Idea Exchange in partnership with the City of Menifee. We are excited to continue supporting Tech in our region. Join us for our second idea exchange of the year with the City of Menifee Economic Development team on April 16th. The event will take place from 8:30 – 10:30 am at the City of Menifee City Hall and will include breakfast, an array of speakers, and opportunities to network. Our guest speakers will include Doug Kollmyer, an Entrepreneur in Residence at UCR and Scott Brovsky an Angel Investor, start-up mentor, and Associate Director of Regional Engagement at UCR. To attend, register here.  DigiFestSupport digital creators at DigiFest. If you’d like to attend this 3-day event with several great speakers, click here. The event will take place on April 19-21.  Site Selectors GuildThe first week of April, our Executive Director, Connie Stopher CEcD, will be attending Site Selectors Guild Annual Conference in Nashville, TN. Site Selectors Guild is a great place to connect with site selectors from across the country and hear feedback to level up our region. Due to the date of this conference, there will be no EDC board meeting in April, and we will see you on May 2nd for our Next Board meeting. We will be having Chris Gray from WRCOG as our guest speaker.  ThriveThank you to everyone who attended our first Thrive Inland SoCal – Southwest Riverside County meeting on Tuesday, March 19th. We identified barriers in our region and discussed different types of solutions. We need all your voices to help create a comprehensive economic development plan for our region. Help us collect more data by filling out this survey and you will receive a $50 visa gift card. If you haven’t signed up for our Thrive meetings, click here . Our next meeting will be on April 16th from 3-5 pm at the Temecula Entrepreneur Exchange building. If you need childcare or a ride to assistance get to the meeting, let us know; support is available. Please contact Connie at [email protected].  April Events at the TVE2
 Connie Stopher, CEcD
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