Eight years after Fresno lost one of its best opportunities to turn around the area's lagging economy, economic development efforts sputter along offering incentives for jobs that will barely make a dent in the region's double-digit unemployment rate.

The question that haunts local leaders is how landing the University of California campus planned for the Valley would have changed Fresno's economic landscape. But in 1995, the UC Board of Regents selected Merced County for the 10th UC campus, rejecting bids from Fresno and Madera counties.

Nothing on the current economic development stage in the Valley can compete with the impact of a UC campus. A fully developed campus would bring more than $1 billion in economic activity to a community. When UC Merced is finally built out, university officials predict that there will be 1,400 faculty members earning $60,000 to $100,000 a year, depending on their rank, and 5,000 support staff. These jobs not only pay well, but offer health insurance and other benefits to employees. The Valley has too many employers who don't offer benefits, often forcing taxpayers to pick up the costs of such basic needs as health care.

Service businesses will locate around a UC campus, generating additional economic activity. Those won't just be fast-food outlets or other businesses catering to the daily needs of students and faculty. UC's research capability draws quality businesses to all its campuses.

'A brain magnet'

UC officials point to their campus in San Diego as an example. One in four of the nation's biotech firms are located near the UCSD campus because of its expertise in the field. It's a brain magnet that would counteract the brain drain of many of our best and brightest leaving the Valley for better opportunities.

Fresno can go after all the call-center businesses it wants, but UC going to Merced County was a missed opportunity of epic proportions. It will change Merced and nearby communities in ways that can only be imagined now.

"The impact of a UC campus is more than a Toyota plant and more than an NFL football team," said former Fresno Mayor Dan Whitehurst, who led the community's efforts to get the regents to select Fresno.

There were many reasons Fresno lost out, but the 2,000 acres of free land that Merced offered didn't hurt. Fresno's Academy site also became controversial when it was discovered that the foothill property northeast of Clovis contained about 85 American Indian archaeological sites.

At that point, Fresno could have thrown in with Madera County, whose site was closer to the city of Fresno than the Academy site. It would have helped both counties. But parochial politics prevailed, and the infighting became counterproductive. The regents easily adopted the Merced County site at Lake Yosemite, giving the north Valley a huge economic development bonanza.

There are some in Fresno still trying to start a movement to block the Merced campus, hoping that the regents will change their minds and move the campus to Fresno. That won't happen. The campus is scheduled to open in 2004 unless the state budget problems delay it. But campus construction has already started and much of the administration and part of the faculty have been hired. Gov. Gray Davis also said in an interview last week that he will continue to push for a 2004 opening, and will include funding in his budget.

Easy to gauge

Mark Aydelotte, assistant vice president of university relations at California State University, Fresno, has thought a lot about the impact of a UC campus in the Valley because he previously worked for the UC system.

"You don't have to imagine the impact of not having a UC campus in the Valley because all you have to do is look around and see a Valley that has never benefited by having a UC," Aydelotte said.

"Imagine the region without Fresno State being here. We take it for granted because Fresno State seems to have always been here, but there would be a major negative impact without Fresno State. And how would Los Angeles and the Bay Area be diminished if there never had been a UCLA or a UC Berkeley? Here in the Valley we just don't fully appreciate the loss of something that we never had."

Aydelotte's comments are particularly insightful in context with a Fresno State study that shows the university adding $403 million in annual spending, more than 6,000 jobs and nearly $258 million in wages to the region's economy.

UC Merced is expected to be such a huge economic engine that there will be spinoff advantages even to Fresno. Some faculty, for example, may choose to live in Fresno and commute. But those benefits will be minor compared to actually having a UC campus in town.

It seems that Fresno hasn't learned much from its missteps over landing the UC campus, with parochialism and a lack of a big-city vision continuing to get in the way of economic development efforts. Infrastructure for major industry still isn't even in place. How long will the community continue to be held back by the "Fresno way" of doing things?