DOWNTOWN L.A’S HOPE FOR MANUFACTURING: SOUTH PARK L.A

SOUTH PARK L.A: CONVERGENCE OF MICRO-MANUFACTURING (WITH GLOBAL COMPONENT SOURCING), ORIGINAL CONTENT PROVIDERS, AND HIGH TECH: L.A’S GREAT HOPE FOR DYNAMIC GROWTH

July 23, 2009

This recession is not over: Some sectors are showing signs of growth-amazing recovery-some sectors sluggish, and the next sector to crash: To devour more wealth and savings, to unglue, unhinge, and demolish the life savings of thousands of investors will be the commercial real-estate market.

It will plunge as sure as rain falls from the sky.

So what is the solution to this? To the Macro economic environment and the Micro economic environment?

Cooperation, connectivity, and the renewal of mercantilism: Of a form of high-tech, high-level, “I trust you, you trust me,” bartering. Alliance building, strategic partnerships, aggregation of forces (businesses, personalities, and organizations), and a willingness to accept the concept that so many Americans shy away from as a viable mode of business: Warfare. Total warfare.

There are enemies-they exist as concepts (I am almost no one man’s enemy): Conventional thinking, delays, anemic policy making, obtuse officials, fearful capital, and mindless, inane C-Level decision makers many of whom, instead of being swept away by a recession they helped cause, have been shifted to another company, or worse elevated.

Capital must flow to innovation and innovative people and organizations congregate together in areas: South Park Los Angeles is one.

Its the next Tribeca- Its most certainly a micro (veiled) Silicon Valley.

This recession will come and it will go in the next three years-in the next three years-through the recession, exponential growth will be found in sustainability, green-companies, green-tech related companies, and-yes-dare I say it: Manufacturing. Manufacturing is a different animal that what it once was.

Its nimble, its out of garages and small warehouses, its fast, replicatable, and getting less expensive to do: This recession has cracked the delicate egg of Union domination and corporate greed-its the moment for America (for Los Angeles), to seize and begin to develop rapid-cycle, niche manufacturing.

MANUFACTURING IS THE OLD NEW. WATCH SOUTH PARK L.A: ITS SOON GOING TO BE A HUB OF MICRO-MANUFACTURING ENABLED BY ITS INNOVATIVE SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS CONCENTRATED IN TECH AND CONTENT CREATION, AND INTERNATIONALLY THROUGH GLOBAL SOURCING OF COMPONENTS.

We’re not at a dead-end, its a cul-de-sac: The tide will turn and lift boats powered by entrepreneurs, risk takers, and visionaries.

South Park L.A: So Cal’s Sillicon Valley & Ayala Park: Asia’s Silicon Valley

-posted by martin cavanaugh porter

South Park L.A is a microcosm of Silicon Valley: But better. Here’s why- The brilliance and boldness, the ‘newness’ and vigor of ideas that flowed from that great hotbed of ingenuity which helped the economies of the world flourish-exists in South Park, within a six block geographical zone.

And more: It is youth, brilliance and glitter matched with (some)seasoned experience (half those folks caused this recession-(it’s called ‘failing upwards and I still think these pigs at the trough should be called to account) ‘the other half have much  wisdom to offer: Just North of our great 90015 incubator that is South Park are the institutions that repose in them many men and women with experience and the financial expertise to assist the tech-creative-manufacturing-design hotbed that is South Park, L.A.

Even better: Abroad, in South East Asia, in the most unlikely places one might think, are other hotbeds of brilliance- Ayala Tech Park in the Philippines, and VC’s spread out like fans on a spinning fan looking for excellence, seeking alliances, and investing in strategic partnerships. Our company,my team, Forbes-South Park Dev Group (mcporter@flvllc.com) is working with one of the key players in that VC fan for two reasons:

To build the dream that is M Motors- a dream that convention and retrograde, formulaic in-the-box thinking will never destroy.

To work to form a strategic partnership with them, providing a pipeline of projects from South Park, viable to finance for expansion and growth purposes.

 It is with alacrity and with a renewed sense of purpose that I find myself forever taken by South Park and it’s pioneers-and it is my mission and one of the core purposes of my life to move South Park L.A’s brilliant, bright, entrepreneurs into the spotlight of international expansion, of better, brighter days.

Forbes & M Motors: Green manufacturing will rise in DT Los Angeles: Three year goal post

I can’t stop learning because within the limitations of my points-of-view and sense that I must engage actively in the small world I inhabit: DT L.A (South Park L.A), I meet so many people, so talented that force me to re-think concepts and precepts and to do new things in new ways: Patterns that I would not normally follow.

I am vitalized by my vision and my passions and trying to include all points of view-stay fresh-agile: Even when it doesn’t feel good: Digesting the unpalatable meal of humility to get along to go along. It is however nutritional and brings me, my team, my family, and the hundreds of future employees I hire and care for, one step closer to the great dream and the grand goal of building up DT L.A’s job base through green, all electric, zero-emission manufacturing of full scale vehicles.

Where? Not in some far flung industrial center-not in the outer-reaching of our incredible city-of this megalopolis, which Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, Mayor Tom Bradley, and others re-envisioned to have a central core.

M Motors, within three years, will manufacture in DT L.A and, like American Apparel-though with some core differences-components will be brought in from abroad to some degree, hundreds of men and women from Boyle Heights to South Central, hands coarse, full of un-used latent talents, even aging, will rise and work and see from their own labors our inner-cities’: Our core-city’s rebirth.

I am not a fanatic nor am I a hyper-idealist, nor am I an enemy of profit: Raised in dealerships and distributorships under the benevolent but insistent hand of my father: (age 6, 10 new vocabulary words a day-flash cards-until I was 18, from age 8 and on, reciting back to him The Economist Magazine, at age 10 through 18, forced debates-which I relished- at the dinner table about three subjects-politics, business, and values): I am a realist, who having been raised by a pragmatist who did many ‘impossible’ things, many times, taught me that to dream entrepreneurial dreams that combined a sense of social-justice with a strong eye on the bottom-line and ROI, and on profits (“look out for your workers-they have families-and they also have dreams,”-one of many things he would say to me), are not incongruous-they are complimentary.

There are many businesses to be in and for now and the foreseeable future, my company: South Park Development Group, bannered under Forbes Legacy Ventures LLC will develop a Dealership-Distributorship with expansionary goals and be a Business Advisory and biz-accelerator (it’s not my company-just like the consumer owns companies by virtue of buying their products-Forbes is owned by three-God willing soon to be four of my compadres, warriors, who through sleet or snow, under cover of darkness and in the full sunlight of a bright day, have stood by the vision, and maintained their equipoise even under the most egregious insults to our vision).

The seeds of Forbes were laid by my father: Raised in the flat-lands of Kansas, on a farm, whose father was loved and respected for his honor and drive (inherited by my father, and a goal-post for me) brilliant of mind, he gained degrees to George Town and Cambridge University, England, and, reading Nights of Arabia, married a young Spanish-Japanese beauty in Morocco, flew off to Asia (remember, if you can, when Pan Am was Pan Am!) and still, nearly penniless, went to Asia to seek and build a fortune and leave a legacy.

He built a fortune and he lost it. He built a legacy and I grasped it and asked others to join with me to build it.

It’ s a whisper on the wind, an echo in the night, a still-distant drum beat: But if you listen carefully enough, you can hear the beat of the drums getting louder and the sing-song cadence of hopeful birds chanting “rebirth.”

For my family, for my allies, for my team, for myself, and for my city: Late nights and early mornings until all the second-raters and nay-sayers see from their small apertures full-scale, powerful, vehicle manufacturing rise up in South Park L.A.

There was a mayor known for burning the midnight oil for the sake of his vision for the city (Downtown central library, integration, equality)-Mayor Tom Bradley. There was a Mayor “Tough enough to turn L.A around…” and he did, Richard Riordan-both were known for ‘late nights and early mornings.’

When I was a little boy (6-12) in my blue pajamas my father (he raised me-I was raised by my father alone), would review the vocab-flash cards before bed, read me a book (The Fountain Head, Atlas Shrugged, Shakespeare, the list is endless), and then go to his study and work. When I woke, blurry-eyed, but excited at a new day (nothing like the first wink of sunlight), my father was at the breakfast table, reading the Financial Times, muttering to himself, and watching the Telex machine for orders-he was a dealer and a distributorship (telex machine?-look it up, lol).

Late nights and early mornings.