Home / Archive / Yuba/Sutter: The Rx for Unemployment
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: April 2007
The Rx for Unemployment
Can the healthcare industry balance Yuba-Sutter’s jobs-to-housing ratio?
Story by Stephanie Flores
First came the houses, then the people. Now, Yuba and Sutter counties are looking for the jobs.
A few years ago, new homes were affordable for first-time homebuyers, but these fast-growing communities have since seen soaring home prices and plodding job growth.
The largest employers in the area are Beale Air Force Base and state and local governments, but the Yuba-Sutter Economic Development Corp. has identified another industry for future jobs: healthcare. Healthcare accounted for less than 8 percent of area jobs in 2004, according to an analysis by the economic development group, but it will likely account for most new job openings in the coming years.
There are already a handful of new medical facilities in the pipeline, and with the growing population, the counties will need them. Yuba was the fastest-growing county last year at 4.42 percent, according to California Department of Finance estimates, and Sutter was sixth at 3.25 percent. More growth is slated, as developers have submitted applications for at least 36,000 dwelling units in just the county planning departments. Among these applications is Sutter Pointe, a massive development brewing in south Sutter County with room to lure a regional employer.
In December, Sutter County had an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, followed by Yuba County at 8.6 percent, according to the California Employment Development Department. Since 2000 and the subsequent housing boom, rates haven’t averaged much change.
The housing market has slowed in Sutter and Yuba counties, but prices have remained high. More than 2,050 new homes were sold in the counties during 2005, but that number dropped by half the next year according to the Gregory Group, a Folsom-based company that analyzes new home markets. As unsold inventory mounted in 2006, housing prices dropped 4.1 percent to an average of $365,547 in Yuba and 2.5 percent for an average of $337,414 in Sutter.
“The goal has been to try and keep pace with the growing population.”
— Theresa Hamilton, chief executive, the Fremont-Rideout Health Group
Compared to the region, prices are still low in the area, says Judy Smith, president of the Sutter-Yuba Association of Realtors. Despite strong sales in the fourth quarter of 2006, she added, it’s still a buyer’s market, with inventory nearly seven months out. The slowdown hasn’t stopped developers from building.
The Yuba County Planning Department is processing applications for seven major projects, says Interim Planning Director Wendy Hartman. Five of the plans call for nearly 18,540 dwelling units. The other two specific plans, Tierra Linda and Magnolia Ranch, total 1,700 acres and will process their applications and determine land use with an upcoming general plan update.
As for Sutter County, the general plan is set up to protect agricultural land in unincorporated areas, Senior Planner Doug Libby says, except to expand cities and the commercial reserve in the south county. The other major development is Sutter Pointe, a 7,500-acre, mixed-use project in south Sutter County, which is designated for industrial and commercial use.
Though the formal application is still incomplete for Sutter Pointe, the developers are working on it, Project Manager George Carpenter says. Underground construction could start as early as 2009, with vertical construction beginning a year later, he says.
Plans call for roughly 17,300 residential units. To keep workers near their homes, developers hope to attract a range of jobs, from warehouse to skilled high-tech.
There are two major job sites in the pipeline that could compete with Sutter Pointe for employers: Placer Vineyards to the east, and Metro Air Park to the south. Placer Vineyards would be a 5,200-acre development slated to bring nearly 7,700 jobs to western Placer County. The nearly 1,900-acre Metro Air Park in north Sacramento County could employ more than 36,000 workers.
Carpenter says the other developments aren’t competition because Sutter Pointe is able to take large employers that need more than 100 acres to set up shop.
“We are marketing these properties now,” Carpenter says. “Brokers tell us the major competition for what we’re trying to do is down in Stockton, because they have the large industrial and commercial sites.”
These larger developments are still in the planning and environmental approval stages; perhaps more imminent for the workforce in Sutter and Yuba are new medical facilities, some of which have broken ground.
The need for registered nurses won’t let up any time soon, says Betty Bonner, Yuba College’s nursing director. Each semester, Yuba College admits 30 students into its nursing program, which has a waitlist of more than 200.
The Fremont-Rideout Health Group is the largest private employer in the area, with 2,000 employees and an annual payroll of $92 million. It’s working on three major projects: an $18 million office and medical ancillary services building in Yuba City that broke ground in March, a $27 million senior-living building and expansion in Yuba City, and an $85 million, five-story tower to house critical-care patients in Marysville. The plans for the tower go to the state for approval next year.
Another local nonprofit, the Sutter North Medical Group, has also entered into a joint venture to build Sutter Surgical Hospital North Valley, a 14-bed surgical hospital in Yuba City. Sutter North is building the center along with community surgeons and National Surgical Hospitals Inc., a surgical hospital-development company based in Chicago.
The hospital would provide a center for elective procedures where the staff and facilities will be specialized to focus on surgery, says Richard Tortosa, a local orthopedic surgeon involved with the project. The hospital should produce better outcomes and lower costs, he adds.
A high poverty rate and an increasing uninsured population also have caused Del Norte Clinics Inc. to expand in the area. The clinics target poor and traditionally underserved populations and run on government aid programs and grants. Business for Del Norte is increasing 4 to 5 percent per year, Chief Executive Lawrence Fong says.
In January, Del Norte opened a new 3,000-square-foot clinic in Wheatland and a partner clinic with Yuba College in March. Next, it’s trying to open a new 8,000-square-foot clinic in Arbuckle. That is still in the planning stage, Fong says, but hopefully it will be up and running within a couple years.
Del Norte doesn’t offer specialists, just primary-care physicians and dentists. Doctors send patients to other medical centers on referral. However, Sutter and Yuba counties are already short on specialists, not to mention the national shortages of medical staff, such as registered nurses.
The need for registered nurses won’t let up any time soon, says Betty Bonner, Yuba College’s nursing director. Each semester, Yuba College typically admits 30 students into its registered-nurse program, which has a waitlist of more than 200. Cambridge Career College in Yuba City is looking to offer a nurse-training program, but first it is conducting a feasibility study to see if there are enough local clinical positions for students to train.
Theresa Hamilton, chief executive of Fremont-Rideout, says finding medical staff, such as registered nurses, isn’t harder in Yuba and Sutter.
“These are national issues,” she says. “The goal has been to try and keep pace with the growing population. The challenges today are different than even 10 years ago.
