Struggling With an Identity Crisis

Six years after it was named to reflect a burgeoning cluster of high technology companies along a stretch of the Ventura (101) Freeway, the 101 Tech Corridor has become more a state of mind than of place.

To be sure, the corridor is home to biopharmaceutical giants like Amgen and Baxter, but it also houses insurance companies, Verizon Communications Inc. and Dole Food Co., not exactly names that come to mind when you think about high-tech players.

For that matter, the corridor really isn’t a corridor at all. It includes companies like Sabeus Photonics Inc., an optical communications company, miles away from the Ventura (101) Freeway in Chatsworth and Second Sight Medical Products in Sylmar, where it takes two freeways just to get to the 101.

The area’s diversity helped it to weather the recession that gripped the tech industry during the early part of this decade. But it has also created an identity crisis that makes it difficult for the 101 Corridor to attract financing, workers and even new companies, while other communities Silicon Valley, San Diego and Orange County get all the attention.

“When I left my employer in Ventura to form Venture Management, I did so with the belief that Ventura County, Western Los Angeles, and Southern Santa Barbara County would go the way of Orange County, and I was looking forward to the kind of development of the technology base in the 101 corridor that I thought would lead to a complete redefinition of the economic engine of this area,” said Mark B. Shappee, managing principal of Venture Management, consultants who specialize in mergers