Focus on the Family’s Move Limits Options for Its 700 Employees

For Tom Hess, a job relocation from Pomona to Colorado Springs, Colo., carries an opportunity to buy his first house and raise his family in a safer town with purer air, a slower pace and less congestion.

But for Bob Stalians, the relocation would have been a nightmare, trading a comfortable life with family and friends for cold weather and unfamiliar surroundings.

Hess and Stalians were faced with the same choice confronting 700 other employees at Focus on the Family in Pomona: move to Colorado Springs with the organization by October or lose their jobs.

Their dilemma is like that faced by others whose employers--beset by the economic downturn--are fleeing expensive California for places where the cost of operating is cheaper.

For many of those affected by corporate upheavals, it’s a tough choice, made more difficult by a recession that has narrowed employment opportunities.

Paul Hetrick, vice president of Focus on the Family, which was founded by radio psychologist and author James Dobson to promote family values from a conservative Christian perspective, said the recession has not slowed the organization’s growth.

Indeed, he said, tough times are just one more reason for people to turn to Focus for advice on coping with family problems.

But Hetrick said the recession has complicated the decision-making for employees, all of whom were offered a chance to move with the organization. Some employees who really don’t want to leave Southern California may move anyway because of the difficulty of finding another job here, Hetrick said. Others who would like to live in Colorado cannot move because their spouses would lose jobs here that they could not match in Colorado.

Hetrick said the Colorado job market is so tight that a temporary snow removal position drew 140 applicants. When a hotel in Colorado Springs reopened last year, 2,000 people applied in just two days.

Focus has flown groups of employees to Colorado Springs to look at the area, has brought school and real estate experts from Colorado Springs to Pomona to talk to workers, and is soliciting new jobs for those who do not choose to move. The organization expects to retain about half of its employees, including most of its top managers.

Hetrick said Focus will save about $5 million a year in operating costs by moving to an area where salaries and taxes are lower. Employees who move will not take pay cuts, but their salaries will be frozen for up to three years while new employees are hired in Colorado at lower rates. The savings in health insurance premiums alone will amount to $1 million, Hetrick said. Another lure is a promised donation by a Colorado foundation of $4 million, contingent on relocation.

The move will be carried out in stages, with the first group leaving in August, another group in September and the remainder in October.

Stalians, 35, who has been purchasing manager for three years, said he knew as soon as the move was announced last June that he would not go to Colorado because of his ties to this area. Stalians has lived or worked in Pomona all of his life, and his wife’s family has lived in the area since 1883. They have two sons, 5 and 3.

With nine parents, grandparents and great-grandparents in the area, Stalians said, family get-togethers are a major part of their lives.

Stalians, who bought a house in Rancho Cucamonga nine years ago, said that by moving to Colorado, “we could get a bigger house with more land, but I don’t think that’s worth saying goodby to the grandparents.”

With college degrees in psychology and Christian education and job experience ranging from handyman to running a transit company with 250 employees, Stalians said he is confident about finding another job. He said he would like to stay with a religious organization, even though he could make more money in private industry.

“I don’t have to make $60,000 or $50,000 a year. I can settle for less,” he said. “I don’t just want to be on a payroll. I want to feel like I’m contributing.”

Stalians declined to disclose his salary at Focus, but said, “This is a nonprofit organization, and we pay accordingly.”

Hess, 34, who came to Focus three years ago to edit Citizen, its public affairs magazine, said the comparatively low salaries of a ministry make it all but impossible for Focus employees like himself to enter the Southern California housing market, unless they are willing to commute long distances from places such as Victorville and Hemet.

Hess said his wife would rather stay home to raise their 3-year-old son and 6-month-old daughter than work to get money to buy a house.

“We don’t have the savings, and we don’t have anyone in the family to lend that 50-grand or whatever it takes to get into a home,” he said. “So we were content to stay in apartments the rest of our lives here. Now that the organization is moving, we have a very clear opportunity to get into a home on one income. And that’s just astounding to us.”

Hess said he has been paying $575 for a two-bedroom apartment in Pomona that would probably cost $800 in a better neighborhood. “The rent is cheap because it’s a tough area,” he said. “The police helicopter circles overhead. We’ve heard gunfire. You don’t walk outside at night.”

But despite those drawbacks, Hess admits to some misgivings about leaving Southern California. He said he will miss the ocean, the diversity and the cultural attractions. Besides, he said, “10 years from now, my kids may say, ‘Dad, why did you move us away from Disneyland. We were so close.’ ”

Hess is in a better position than most to decide on a move because he grew up in Colorado Springs. But his memories of the area are not all happy. “My parents divorced there,” he said. “My younger brother and sister got in trouble there. It’s rough for me to go back to that history.”

Besides, he said, he worries about what might happen if he moves to Colorado, Focus were to lose income and lay him off, and he winds up stuck there looking for another job. “The story has been told around the organization here that there was a night clerk job at a motel (in Colorado Springs). There were 160 applicants, four of whom were Ph.Ds.”

But one benefit of the move, Hess said, is that he will have a large pool of applicants when he advertises nationwide for an assistant for the magazine.

He said many people are unwilling to move to Southern California because they have heard about gangs, high housing costs, smog and traffic congestion. “I suspect Colorado will be a draw, whereas Southern California would have been an impediment,” he said.

Hetrick said Focus has lost many potential employees it has recruited from other parts of the country after they looked at the cost of housing. That won’t be a problem in economically depressed Colorado Springs, where the average house costs less than $100,000, Hetrick said.

Focus, which took in $70 million last year, derives its income from donations for books, magazines, videos and other materials. Dobson’s radio program, heard on 1,500 outlets, draws thousands of letters and telephone calls daily from listeners seeking information or advice. Focus employees send out books or other materials in response to requests, offer counseling by telephone and letter, and produce films, videos, radio programs and written materials.

Dobson started Focus in 1977 in a two-room office in Arcadia after writing a series of popular books on marriage and parenting. The organization grew rapidly and moved to Pomona a decade later.

Focus has sold its two Pomona buildings, with 184,000 square feet of space on 10 acres at the San Bernardino and Orange freeways, to the Cordova Chase Co. in the City of Industry, which is trying to lease or resell the property.

Herb S. Chase, president of Cordova Chase, said he expects the buildings to be occupied within a year by one or more companies with at least as many workers as Focus has.

Chase said his firm has identified 15 companies in the market for that kind of space, including large engineering firms, insurance companies and financial institutions.

Grubb & Ellis Commercial Real Estate Services surveyed large office buildings in Pomona earlier this year and found a 42% vacancy rate, compared with a national average of 20%.

Chase said his firm’s purchase of the property might seem risky in a recession, but no one is constructing such buildings for lease now, raising the value of existing ones.

And, just as economic pressures have driven Focus out of state, similar pressures will force companies that are closer to Los Angeles to seek less expensive quarters in outlying areas such as Pomona, Chase said.

Although a quarter of Focus’s supporters live in California, they can be reached by mail and telephone just as easily from Colorado Springs as Pomona, Chase said. But most companies need to be closer to their markets. He said the Pomona site, which seemed like an expensive location to Focus on the Family, will seem like a bargain to someone else.