The Mile High city last November enticed $18 billion-valued healthcare REIT Healthpeak Properties (NYSE: PEAK) to move its headquarters from Irvine; last month it landed AI technology firm Veritone (Nasdaq: VERI), with a recent market cap of about $900 million. Veritone had been based in Costa Mesa.
Both firms still have OC operations—Veritone’s top two execs, brothers Chad and Ryan Steelberg, continue to live in the area, the company tells the Business Journal.
Vizio (NYSE: VZIO), based in Irvine and now with a market cap of $4.2 billion following its March IPO, is the latest firm expanding in Denver. Last week it announced it would open a ‘Tech Innovation Office’ in the city, with plans to add more than 100 workers there by the end of next year. It currently has roughly 200 employees in Irvine, and 600 employees in total.
The new Vizio office “shows that our city remains an ideal market for innovation,” said Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, whose town lost $44 billion-valued Chipotle (NYSE: CMG) to Newport Beach three years ago.
With the recent influx of OC expats in Denver, no wonder another area restaurant giant, Irvine’s In-N-Out Burger, is expanding in Colorado.
Local reports this month said the privately-held chain’s looking to open its third location in the Denver region later this year. Its first spot there opened last November and reportedly counted 14-hour wait times on its first day of operation.
In 2005, Denver ranked No. 16 among the largest innovation hubs in the U.S., while OC was No. 4, according to data from the Chapman-UCI Innovation Indicator, a recently unveiled index that measures the strength of 22 metro areas in the U.S. in terms of generating economic activity.
By the end of 2020, OC had slipped to No. 7, while Denver rose to the No. 11 spot.
See our
Interested readers can hear more from Doti (and me) on the state of the local economy this Thursday, as part of the Pacific Club's Distinguished Speakers’ Series. See
The secret to Bob Olson’s success? “He makes works of art,” says Robert Webster, President of CBRE Hotels’ Institutional Group, who helped broker a pair of recent deals for the Newport Beach hotel developer. See our front-page feature for more.
Olson’s eye for art, and his business acumen, will be put to good use in Costa Mesa, where he recently joined the board of directors for the Orange County Museum of Art, whose $75 million new home continues to go up at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
OCMA’s new CEO and director, Heidi Zuckerman, started her new post a few months ago. “She’s a superstar,” said Olson.
It’s not all one-way traffic from OC to Colorado these days; Zuckerman was previously CEO and director of the Aspen Art Museum.
The 53,000-square-foot new home of OCMA is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2022.
