MURRIETA: National unemployment high, but hundreds of jobs added in Murrieta in last year

By March 2011, city expects to have created 800 jobs since July 2009

Although the unemployment rate in Inland Empire hovers above 14 percent, Murrieta's economic development leaders are quick to point out that businesses in the city are hiring.

City officials say that more than 300 jobs were created or filled in the city beginning in July 2009, thanks in part to the opening of a furniture store and a Super Target.

Late that month, 175 jobs were created when Super Target opened in The Orchard shopping center, at the northwest corner of Clinton Keith Road and Interstate 215.

And Mor Furniture hired 22 employees when it opened on furniture row off Los Alamos Road in Murrieta.

The opening was regarded with some skepticism by residents because the center, once pegged as a beacon for new homebuyers, had become as vacant as the housing tracts that succumbed to the mortgage crisis. Still, that furniture store drew more traffic into the center, said Bruce Coleman, Murrieta's economic development director.

Another furniture store ---- Jerome's Furniture ---- opened in February 2010 in the Village Walk Plaza near City Hall, creating approximately 27 jobs, Coleman said.

"This is the beginning of optimism," Coleman said during a presentation last month to the City Council regarding economic development, during which he presented statistics of how many jobs have been created locally. "We're still in a recessionary period ... but they're starting to get ready."

In addition, Oak Grove Center for Education, Treatment & the Arts, a residential facility for troubled children, also hired about 50 people in the last year.

"Some of those were replacement positions, but some were new because we added an autism center," said Tammy Wilson, the center's director.

And Nimbus Water System, a reverse osmosis drinking water company, hired eight people.

But the biggest growth, and the growth that city officials are eagerly pushing forward, is and will come from the health care field.

Southwest Healthcare System, which operates Rancho Springs Medical Center in Murrieta and Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar, created 26 new positions within the last year, said spokeswoman Theresa Fleege.

And representatives of Loma Linda University Medical Center-Murrieta, which is scheduled to open in March 2011, say the new hospital is expected to add nearly 500 jobs. Recruitment for those positions will begin shortly.

If that number proves accurate, it would amount to roughly 800 jobs being created in the city in the last 1 1/2 years.

"That's an impressive stat that I didn't know," Councilman Doug McAllister said. "Next time someone says, 'Are we bringing jobs?', we can say, 'yeah.'"

Call staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at 951-676-4315, ext. 2626.