Tough Times Just Seem to Get Tougher : Jobs: The move of Focus on the Family from Pomona to Colorado Springs left a big gap in the local economy. Some who stayed behind wonder if they made the right decision. : POMONA

When Focus on the Family, a Christian evangelical ministry that takes in $70 million a year, moved from Pomona to Colorado Springs last fall, it took 700 jobs with it.

The relocation has altered the lives of employees who made the transfer and of those left behind. It also deprived Pomona of its eighth largest employer and left a gaping hole in the city’s premier business park.

Now, two and a half months after the move, the city and the owner of the buildings that Focus left behind are optimistic about attracting new business. Employees who made the move are adjusting, although some reportedly worry about selling houses left behind in Southern California. And some employees who decided not to go are still looking for jobs.

Among the latter is Bob Stalians, a 36-year-old purchasing agent. He and his wife did not want to leave parents, grandparents and an extended family whose roots in the Pomona Valley go back to the last century.

So Stalians worked until Focus closed its doors in Pomona on Oct. 18. He has been looking for a job ever since. Now he is beginning to have second thoughts about his decision to stay. Just getting a job interview has been tough, he said.

“There doesn’t seem to be much out there. . . . Sometimes, though we really like it here, we wonder if we shouldn’t have gone.”

Although he still hopes to land a job soon, “it’s pretty discouraging,” he said.

He has tried employment agencies without success. He has answered ads in which a high management position turned out to be a job selling insurance and a position touted as a financial planner was a ploy to find people willing to talk friends into refinancing their houses and invest some of the proceeds.

Stalians said the closest he came to being hired was finishing among 10 finalists for a purchasing job that drew 100 applicants.

Stalians is far from desperate. He has actually enjoyed time spent fixing up his Rancho Cucamonga home, reconditioning a train set for his children, reading and thinking. And he said he is not financially strapped, although his wife, Laurie, 29, who had wanted to stay home to raise their two boys, ages 6 and 3, has talked of looking for a job.

But he wishes he knew what lies ahead.

“This could be a tragic time in our life,” he said, “or (if a good job comes along) a great opportunity.”

Job-hunting has left Stalians nostalgic for his work at Focus.

“I probably would have retired there,” he said. “That’s the difficult part, when you have a job with an organization you like and people you like, and it goes. . . .”

About 386 Focus employees did transfer. Among them was Tom Hess, the editor of the organization’s public policy magazine. Hess is delighted that he moved his wife and two children to Colorado Springs, where, he said, the environment is clean and the streets are safe.

“I haven’t seen one instance of graffiti,” Hess said. “There are no police helicopters overhead. . . . “I don’t hear the pop-pop-pop of gunfire that I heard in Pomona.”

Hess, 35, said he is paying $200 less per month for a better apartment than the one he rented in Pomona. He is also looking forward to buying a house in Colorado Springs. He felt shut out of the high-priced California real estate market, he said, but he will be able to buy a three-bedroom house in Colorado Springs for about $62,000.

California real estate has proved an uncomfortably binding tie for some of the transferred employees. Paul Hetrick, a Focus vice president, estimates that of about 50 California houses that went on the market because of the relocation, about half remain unsold. Some owners have given up and are trying to lease their houses until conditions change, he said.

About half a dozen employees have returned to Southern California, either because their real estate didn’t sell or for other personal reasons, such as a spouse who could not find a job.

The real estate problem is such a serious burden on some employees that it has become a topic of prayer at the organization’s devotional meetings, Hess said.

But Hetrick said most employees seem to have adjusted well to Colorado.

Focus, which was founded by James Dobson, a popular author and radio psychologist, to produce radio programs, films, magazines and other publications to promote conservative Christian values, was lured to Colorado by a $4-million grant from the private El Pomar Foundation.

There were other incentives, as well. The organization will save $5 million a year through lower salaries and reduced taxes. The annual payroll, which was $15 million in Pomona, has been pared to $13 million in Colorado Springs, Hetrick said. Pay for new employees, chosen from about 8,000 applicants, is lower than in Pomona, and the organization uses more part-time workers, whose hours can be adjusted to the workload.

The Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp., which encouraged Focus on the Family’s move, is aggressively pursuing other employers. Robert (Rocky) Scott, the corporation’s president, said about half the 105 employers he is trying to lure now are located in California.

Among the amenities he can cite are clean air, no traffic congestion, a cost of living that is 20% below California’s and a government that is so cooperative that it promises to process permits for incoming businesses in five days.

Although Pomona can’t match promises like those, local leaders are optimistic about replacing Focus.

Herb Chase, who owns the buildings that Focus vacated at the 50-acre University Corporate Center at the San Bernardino and Orange (57) freeways, is confident that he will be able to attract a replacement.

“We have a lot of prospects,” Chase said. “Our expectation is positive.”

Chase, who bought the buildings from Focus with partner Fred B. Cordova III for their Cordova Chase Co., said it made economic sense to buy the property despite a glut of office space in the region.

If Chase is able to lease the office space soon, Focus on the Family’s move could actually mean good news for the city of Pomona. Pomona City Treasurer Daniel Hempel said the replacement of Focus with a profit-making business would increase the city’s revenue.

As a tax-exempt religious organization, Focus generated no property-tax or business-license revenue and very little sales tax revenue, he said. A business occupying the same space, he said, could give the city an additional $180,000 a year.