More Californians reverse course and head to Oklahoma

By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
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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.