California Business Minute™

Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.

The city of Torrance is looking at establishing a tourism and visitors center

"Torrance seems to be in the middle of everything geographically and business wise," said
Philip de Souza, vice chair of Economic Tourism for the Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce.
"But we call ourselves a balanced city - and I say this respectfully - we've overbalanced so
much we don't stand for much of anything," he added. "A project like this would put the Mickey
Mouse ears on Torrance - it would give us a brand.

The latest effort at establishing a visitors center was initiated by the city's two largest hotels,
the Marriott and Doubletree. Both have a sizable weekday business clientele. But come the
weekends, businesspeople vanish and few visitors take their place, said Pam Ryan, general
manager at the Torrance Marriott.

At one point, the Chamber established the grandly named Torrance International Trade & Visitors
Center, which came complete with a web site at  www.visittorrance.com. But, now the woefully
out of date and largely forgotten web site lives on, but no one quite knows what happened to the
visitor’s center or even when it was established, said Fran Fulton of the city's Economic
Development Office.

I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.