PAGE 3: Stan’s Suit; Steven’s Spanish-Language Edge

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Anyone else notice that Stan Kroenke wore the same harvest wheat suit with crisp white shirt to his Rams’ playoff game that he rocked for the cover of our annual Book of Lists? (see related coverage, “Titanic Tales,” page 1) … The first time I took note of the suit – a sharply cut, double-breasted number – was the day the Rams pasted the New Orleans Saints back in November, a win that signaled the L.A. squad was for real this year. Can’t exactly call it a lucky suit, since the team lost the first-round playoff game. But there was plenty of spirit, enthusiasm and effort – and strong results – out of the Rams over the course of the season, so here’s suggesting Kroenke keep that suit as his game-day uniform … And here’s a money shot from the site of the stadium that will be the heart of Kroenke’s $3 billion L.A. Sports & Entertainment District – squint a bit and you’ll see the construction cranes frame the Inglewood Forum in the background. Take that as foreshadowing of future turns that will make the already hotly competitive landscape for sports and entertainment venues in the L.A market even more so. Kroenke’s development will include the 70,000-seat stadium and a 6,000-seat performing arts venue. The Forum –once a shrine of basketball and now mainly a concert house –is a stone’s throw away. A new basketball shrine could be just as close if Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer has his way. And that’s all just 10 or 12 miles from downtown –where AEG hosts basketball, musical acts and other events spread over the 21,000-seat Staples Center, the 7,100-seat Microsoft Theater, and the 2,300-seat Novo by Microsoft … Look for Kroenke’s operation, AEG, Forum owner Madison Square Garden Co., and the Clippers – if Ballmer builds his basketball team its own house – to compete hard for everything from big concerts to awards ceremonies and e-sports tournaments …Then look for the spread of venues and the competitive juice to help lift L.A. to the title of undisputed center of sports in the U.S. … Steven Banks, the newly appointed chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., is counting on his knowledge of the Spanish language – a byproduct of his time growing up in Mexico – to help in research on the local economy in a county with a large Latino-American population. Seems he might get the chance to test that proposition right off the bat—it was only about a week after Banks signed onto the job that President Donald Trump moved to end a federal program that had offered Temporary Protected Status to about 250,000 immigrants from El Salvador who lacked standard visas or green cards but were accepted to the U.S. as economic refugees after a couple of devastating earthquakes racked their native country in 2001 … The program will no doubt have an outsized effect in L.A., home to the largest number of TPS holders who now face deportation. The Westlake-based Central American Resource Center, a longstanding social service agency born in the local Salvadoran –American community, estimates 30,000 TPS holders here. CARACEN reports that about 23 percent of male TPS holders in the L.A. area work in construction. The estimate here is that the Trump Administration’s move could trim 3,500 or so construction workers from the construction industry’s already-tight labor pool in L.A. County – although Banks is probably better equipped to break down the numbers … Take a look at Caroline Anderson’s front-page report on the most recent tourism numbers for L.A. County and add any questions it might prompt about the effects Trump’s tweeting has had on visitor counts from Mexico to Banks’ to-do list … Sullivan Says: I thought the United Oil location at Sunset & Portia in Echo Park was the best looking gas station in the city – until I saw the chain’s property at La Brea & Slauson in Baldwin Hills.

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