In the midst of the current economic downturn, Paso Robles has some good news to celebrate. New commercial and industrial development is coming here and creating business opportunities. One company helping fuel the boom at the Golden Hills Business Park is Lazer Star, a manufacturer of lighting products for motorcycles, dune buggies, off-road trucks and ATVs. Lazer Star invested $3-million dollars in Paso Robles with a brand new 21,400-square-foot building and relocated their company from Orange County.

“We moved to Paso Robles for quality of life,” said Vice-President Ron Scott. “It’s a whole different world up here, compared to Southern California.”

By moving the company, they’ve created seven full-time jobs here and have plans to expand to nine in the next few months. They include Ron’s sister, sales manager Suzi Cusimano and mother Betty Scott.

“This town started out as a vacation place when I was a child,” Ron said. “And we thought it would be a great place to live and run our business.”

“We make lighting products, like headlights, turn lights, spotlights, accent lights, and off-road lights for trucks and ATVs,” he said.

They are high-end products, that get a higher price point, because of higher attention to quality and detail. The company ships about 10,000 units a year and is available in thousands of retailers nationwide.

Their product lines include the “Lazer Star” brand of billet-aluminum lights with LED or halogen light bulbs; the “Visor” line of lower-priced lights imported from China; the “Dominator HID” line of large high-intensity-discharge lights; and “iStar” a new compact HID light.

A growing market for the company is specialty lighting on Harley-Davidsons and similar motorcycles. But they’ve also done lights for wakeboard towers, sail boats, tow trucks, fire trucks and air craft.  

The company sponsors an off-road truck racing team based in Paso Robles. “Team Orbit,” a Class-7 truck, owned by Mike Ruane, uses the Dominator lighting products. The team was a recent champion of the “Best in the Desert” racing series.

The Scott family was able to move the business because most if their products are sold primarily through dealers and trade shows. So they rely on shippers like UPS for getting parts in and shipping the finished product out to the dealers.

A few things slow them down in Paso. “In Orange County I could just walk into an industrial parts supplier and get what I need in ten minutes. Or drop into my metal finishers,” Ron said.

But he says he’s found the cost of doing business is a little cheaper. He just saved some money on his workers comp insurance by relocating.

He’s also hoping the Paso location will help him grow in the recreational vehicle market at the Oceano Dunes with all the pass-through traffic coming from the Central Valley. “We’d like to tap into that market directly,” he said.

Their new building, dubbed “The Safari Center” has a high-tech look with clean lines. It was built with glass, masonry and architectural flat panels painted silver and champagne with red accents. The centerpiece of the building is a towering flagpole and a decorative waterfall.

A lot of extra attention went into the building, said Ryan Paine, the project manager and Lazer Star’s business development manager. “Its not just lease space, its our corporate home. So we built it at a higher standard,” he said.

The five-unit building already has one tenant, Safe Haven Wine Storage. It has three more spaces available for businesses needing 3,400 to 11,000 square-feet. “We’ve already had interest from a couple wineries looking for tasting rooms,” Paine said.

Lazer Star is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2734 Danley Court. They are celebrating their grand opening in two weeks.

It’s great to hear success stories like these. I think we should urge City Hall to do all it can to attract companies like these and provide incentives for relocation and new construction.

Author Scott Brennan is owner of North County’s Access Yellow Pages and SLO County Visitors Guide. You can reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .