CORPORATE RAIDERS LOOKING TO THE WEST

Southern California, particularly Los Angeles, was the mecca for many years for people enthralled with a vision of high living, high salaries, and the L.A.id-back lifestyle. Migrants headed west to join others in supposed sophistication in the city.

A different entourage is now flying into L.A. and fighting the freeway battles. Corporate raiders and headhunters are actively recruiting companies and employees who have become disgruntled with the crowded reality of life in Southern California. Recruiters find people intrigued with the offerings they dangle as an alternative, including drastically cheaper housing, lower taxes, insurance and utility rates, abundant water, quality of life, much shorter commutes, less crime and other enticements.

Monty and Adonis Bates and friends Steve and Lee Carlson have been scouting Southeast Missouri for a locale to live and work.

The couples hope to find a respite from the urban problems and settle here, perhaps working in their own business. Both men are engineers, currently working on military projects under Pentagon contracts.

"For one thing, I want to get out of the death and destruction business," Monty Bates said. "I want to feel at the end of the day that I have helped people, and not be a cog in the corporate wheel."

Companies recruiting college graduates find they can lure new employees to the Midwest and Eastern seaboard with ease, but not to L.A.'s Orange County.

McDonnell Douglas Corp., which has built jetliners in Long Beach for many years, will build a $750 million factory in a yet-to-be-announced state, possibly Missouri, for its new MD-12X jetliner. Officials blame labor costs, environmental regulations and the high cost of living in southern California for not considering that locale. Lockheed Corp. is relocating its plant in Burbank for new digs in Georgia. Expected cost savings: $50 million annually. Bank of America is relocating its operation with 2,000 employees to Arizona. Hughes Helicopters Inc. already moved from Culver City to Mesa, Ariz.

In a 1989 Los Angeles Times poll of 2,000 city residents, one-half were considering moving from the area. Only one in four non-metropolitan residents contemplated the same in a similar Gallup Poll nationally.

The Bates and Carlsons appreciate this area's housing affordability and quality contrasted to L.A.'s. Accustomed to $1,600 monthly mortgage payments for a 1,000 square foot, three-bedroom, one-bath home with no basement, the two families are considering local housing options, including renovating an older house.

"People there buy houses for $200,000 to $300,000, then have no time to be in them," Monty Bates said. "Those people have no life, but they have a house."

The couple said residents there are experiencing higher rates of burnout than before, blazing temporarily. "The flames burn bright, but don't last long," he said. "Some people are burned out at age 30. People are in the fast track, with the throttle wide open."

"The `junior birdmen,' the new generation coming up, want it all now, they have no personal ethics and are programmed for the almighty dollar. Strip the veneer and you have nothing, no core. Being autonomous, they have no loyalty. Their sense of self-worth is measured in dollars. They helped drive me away."

The couples see a renewal in the rural renaissance of the 1970, but slightly modified now. As members of the first crop of baby boomers, they want to be near the amenities of smaller metropolitan areas, such as St. Louis, but do not prefer to withdraw totally, up in the hills. But they want to escape from L.A.'s maze of millions of inhabitants, shoehorned into 6,380 people per square mile.

Some ex-urbanites have focused on this area's quality of life due to Cape Girardeau, Sikeston and Carbondale, Ill.,

ranking favorably in the "Rating Guide to Life in America's Small Cities," (Prometheus Books, 1990). Both Cape Girardeau and Carbondale ranked first in their states and Cape Girardeau scored 17th in the nation.