ANDERSON — The city sits amidst lush Indiana woodlands and crop fields rather than the middle of the California desert. Its people are mainly retirees, health care workers and teachers rather than millionaire software engineers.

But Anderson has more in common with California’s Silicon Valley, the epicenter of America’s high-tech gadget production, than most might think, say those close to the city’s newest efforts to attract business.

City officials and business people are making every effort to take Anderson’s automotive past, forever linked to the city since General Motors employed 25,000 people there, and spin it toward the future, hoping the automobile companies of the next generation will be attracted to the former GM engineers who still call the area home.

“I think there’s a great tradition if one looks at Silicon Valley,” said Mike Hudson, CEO of Anderson’s IPower Energy Systems, which developed a natural gas generator that runs using a modified GM engine. “There is a very good model that says success breeds success. When one looks at a startup business or a new high-tech business, you look for a core of talented engineers or people who are interested in engineering, and I think we certainly have that.”

Anderson sits in the middle of a triangle with points in northern Indianapolis, Muncie and Kokomo where the automotive industry once was the lifeblood of the area. As the number of active auto factories and jobs continues to dwindle, local officials look for a new industry to fill the void.

“I am optimistic that we are heading in the right direction,” said Chuck Staley, president of Anderson’s Flagship Enterprise Center, which helps grow startup businesses and has served as a point of attraction for the small alternative energy companies that have come to the city. “We’ve already got a certain critical mass that’s under way here.”

Companies like IPower, along with Altairnano, which develops lithium-ion batteries, and Bright Automotive, a Colorado transplant, which recently unveiled its 100-mile-per-gallon Bright Idea fleet vehicle, already call Anderson home. Staley hopes to attract more companies like them using both city efforts and federal stimulus dollars.

Staley and city officials have traveled to Washington, D.C., on numerous occasions seeking $18 million to build a new technology park they hope will attract the right kind of employer. The tech park could involve renovating the former General Motors Plant 20 or building a new 300,000-square-foot facility near the Flagship.

Anderson Economic Development Director Linda Dawson and Anderson/Madison County Corporation for Economic Development Director Rob Sparks will go to Korea and China in the fall to make contact with other alternative energy companies looking to locate in the Midwest.

“I’m getting some traction with some foreign investment,” Sparks said. “Hopefully this will be a good summer for Anderson.”

Officials and business owners say Anderson has a leg up when it comes to turning itself into an epicenter for alternative energy, particularly electric, vehicles.

“We’re staying here because there is a good supply of engineering and there is a good interest in the engineering field,” said Hudson of IPower. “We’re close to that supplier base (in Indianapolis) and have very good access to the interstates.

“There is a growing density of advanced technology work.”

Dawson said the city’s large percentage of workers who once were part of the automobile industry when GM ran the city provides an excellent resource for companies looking to call Anderson home.

“We feel like Anderson is a perfect match for this type of activity because of the background,” she said. “We have an abundance of electrical engineers in the region that would provide an instant labor source for any company.