Los Angeles businesses large and small have been taking their products organic, their meat free-range and their buildings “green” for years now. The trick has been making sure that the other kind of green the folding kind that banks like keeps rolling in.
Forty-year-old Pouria Abbassi took over as chief executive and general manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center in March and he is pinning the center’s financial fortunes on marketing its green initiatives to the world. Abbassi already has committed to obtaining only 20 percent of the conventions center’s energy from the Department of Water and Power, and he’s replaced the center’s heating, ventilation and lighting with maximum efficiency systems. That cost about $2 million, and it will probably take another $1 million to go 100 percent green, which is Abbassi’s goal. So whose green is buying all this green?
“Our paradigm shift,” Abbassi said, “is to go after groups and shows that are environmentally oriented.” The American Wind Energy Association turned out record numbers for its June confab in L.A., drawn in large part by the convention center’s green profile, for example.
Soon after Abbassi took over, he pledged to the City Council that the center would not look to the general fund to pay operating expenses, but then he received word that the ultra-popular E3 video game and tech confab was exiting the center. The show, for video game designers and buyers, had drawn nearly 60,000 guests and represented about 20 percent of the center’s revenue. Abbassi’s answer was to work with local tech and video game firms to create the E4 All Expo, similar to its predecessor but open to the public. It will be held in October. Abbassi has kept his word to the council despite the E3 exit, reporting an operating surplus at the center for the first time in more than a decade.
Posh Shopping
Victoria Beckham has been shopping on Melrose Avenue and Melrose Place, and not for trendy jeans. She’s looking for a space for her just-launched dVb denim fashion line. She’d join high-end couture lines like Marc Jacobs, Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta and Chloe.
Trial Balloon
It’s’s a good bet that several of L.A.’s high-powered honchos will be checking their TV or computer screens with interest on Nov. 21. Chief executives from Activision Inc. (Robert Kotick), Cheesecake Factory (David Overton), Computer Sciences Corp. (Michael Laphen), THQ Inc. (Brian J. Farrell) and Vitesse (Christopher Gardner) will find out on that day the sentence handed down in San Francisco federal court to former Brocade Communications Chief Executive Gregory Reyes, who was convicted in the first criminal stock option backdating case. None of the local execs are facing criminal charges, but all are under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for similar dealings. Richard Marmaro of L.A. law firm Skadden Arps Meagher & Flom LLP represented Reyes.
Todd Cunningham is assistant managing editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at
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