If you’re a technology business in Orange County, odds are you’re in Irvine.
The city leads the pack with more than 60 major technology companies and operations, based on an informal review of the Business Journal’s lists and stories.
Irvine’s contingent is by far the most in the county. Neighboring Santa Ana is next with a dozen or so major tech businesses.
While Irvine clearly dominates, other cities have seen a spillover effect. Some businesses even have left the county’s tech Mecca for offices further south for various reasons, including attracting and keeping workers.
Split the county in half, and one thing’s certain: South County dominates, led by Irvine. OC’s southern half is a hub for tech headquarters and design operations.
North County has its share of the county’s tech businesses, many of them circuit board makers and other manufacturers. The area also houses makers of storage devices and other computer gear.
The main reason: North County has more factories and warehouses for tech production. And rents are cheaper.
Santa Ana counts some 15 sizable tech companies. Some have been lured by the city’s enterprise zone, which gives tax breaks to companies that employ local workers.
After Irvine and Santa Ana, Costa Mesa is next with seven sizable tech companies. Cypress has six or so, mostly Japanese companies. Anaheim and Garden Grove have five each. Huntington Beach, Brea and Fountain Valley each counted two companies. Buena Park, Placentia and Orange had one.
Irvine is home to the county’s most notable tech company, Broadcom Corp. Perhaps because of Broadcom, the city also attracts startups, software makers, chip designers and other media-related businesses.
“You want to be in an environment with a lot of people, energy, venture capital and research and development activity,” said Gary Augusta, president of Octane, an Aliso Viejo-based group that promotes technology entrepreneurs. “That’s what draws people more than anything.”
Irvine has a lot to offer. Its location is roughly at the midpoint of OC. Plus it boasts proximity to John Wayne Airport and local freeways.
The city also benefits from having a major university as an anchor, Augusta said.
“Its association with the university shows it is very much a growing city,” he said.
Being close to the University of California, Irvine, helped draw chipmaker Broadcom to its new headquarters in University Research Park.
“The attraction of this place was the relationship we have with UCI and higher education in general,” said Tom Porter, Broadcom’s vice president of corporate services.
Broadcom Chairman Henry Samueli has given millions to UCI’s engineering school. The company also draws on college students as interns.
In April, the company moved to a 685,000-square-foot, eight building research park there.
“Before, we were separated by a couple of miles with two campuses,” Porter said. “This allowed us to create one campus and it’s a place where we can expand.”
Down the road, Aliso Viejo fashions itself as a potential rival to Irvine. It counts the second biggest concentration of tech businesses in South County.
SiliconSystems Inc., a maker of data storage devices that use flash memory, moved to Aliso Viejo in 2004. It was a clear choice, Chief Executive Michael Hajeck said.
The office “had to be off the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road,” he said. “We didn’t feel there was enough predictability of travel on the 405 and 5 freeways.”
SiliconSystems got its start in Hajeck’s home in San Juan Capistrano.
Once the company outgrew that, it moved to a low-rent space in Hawthorne.
“We didn’t want to tie up a lot of (startup) capital in a lease, but we always knew we’d be OC-based,” Hajeck said.
The company was looking to move back to OC in 2004 and chose Aliso Viejo.
Other factors he considered: proximity to the airport for meetings with customers and suppliers, attracting workers from north San Diego County and keeping workers’ commutes under an hour from wherever they lived in OC.
SiliconSystems workers come from as far as north San Diego, Rancho Palos Verdes and Santa Fe Springs, Hajeck said.
The company at one time considered University Research Park in Irvine.
It fit the bill for being off the toll road, but it didn’t offer the right amount of space for the then-startup of just eight people, Hajeck said.
“They didn’t have a lot of multitenant buildings,” he said. “It was much bigger than a startup might need.”
“Little things” set apart Aliso Viejo from Irvine, Hajeck said.
“It’s not having to make a reservation two weeks in advance to have a business lunch,” he said. “Because that’s business,it isn’t always pre-programmed.”
This year, SiliconSystems is looking to move into an even bigger space,about 40,000 square feet,for its 80 workers.
Hajeck needs offices that can accommodate the company’s engineering team.
“Engineers typically need a different kind if work environment than finance guys,” Hajeck said. “It could be just a different type of layout, workbenches or test labs.”
Hajeck says he’s likely to stay in Aliso Viejo, but might consider University Research Park for a second go-around.
Other OC tech companies have made cross-town moves in recent years.
QLogic Corp., a maker of host bus adapters and network switches, moved from Costa Mesa to Aliso Viejo in 1999.
Back in 2000, disk drive maker Western Digital Corp. moved from the Irvine Spectrum to Lake Forest.
In 2004, Quest Software Inc. followed suit with an exit from its Irvine Spectrum high-rise to offices in Aliso Viejo.
Game maker Blizzard Entertainment Inc. just relocated from Newport Beach into Broadcom’s old headquarters near the Irvine Spectrum.
Last year, Octane took the plunge, too. It moved from Irvine to Aliso Viejo’s TechSpace, an area known as a startup incubator for tech companies.
“A lot of young families and entrepreneurs are settling in this area,” Augusta said. “One of the reasons we settled here is we are in the midst of the startup community and our neighbors are big companies like Quest, QLogic and Buy.com.”
