Each year, L.A.’s Blank Rome law firm “adopts” a local nonprofit, and this year it chose MOSTe, which stands for Motivating Our Students Through Experience. MOSTe’s mission is to mentor local girls from underserved areas to guide them to attend and graduate college.
As part of its adoption, Blank Rome is hosting a career day on Oct. 28 at its Century City office. There will be a raft of volunteer presenters who will lead sessions. One is about how to run a business but there will be seminars on various industries such as accounting and law, entertainment, health care and real estate, among others.
What particularly stands out is the caliber of the more than 30 presenters. Among them: Denise Contis, head of content at CNBC Primetime; Ronald S. Glickman, author and chief information officer at Trader Joe’s, and Jana Monroe, an entrepreneur who was the highest-ranking female at the FBI.
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Kevin Harbour, president of the BizFed Institute, has been selected to chair the steering committee of the Los Angeles High Road Transition Collaborative. It will support the governance structure for California’s $600 million Community Economic Resilience Fund, created to help regional leaders craft economic development plans that promote equitable growth and high-quality green jobs.
Harbour said he was proud to step into a leadership role “for this historic effort that prioritizes equity and inclusion in sustainable economic planning.”
The resilience fund will invest in 13 geographical regions in the state, including Los Angeles, to help create a carbon-neutral economy with good-paying sustainable jobs. Some of the money will be allocated to support businesses that invest in workforces, pay competitive wages and engage in environmentally sustainable practices.
The institute is a nonprofit think tank affiliated with the Los Angeles County Business Federation, commonly called BizFed. Tracy Hernandez, founding chief executive of both BizFed and its institute, said, “This region-by-region approach will ensure (resilience fund) solutions are tailored for diverse communities.”
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Industrial space, which has been tight in Los Angeles especially since the pandemic, finally appears to be loosening up. At least a little.
As you can see on the chart on page 16 of this issue, the vacancy rate for industrial space in Los Angeles County was 2.2% in the third quarter. That’s much higher than the 1.3% recorded just in the prior quarter as well as the year-ago quarter. Although, it must be pointed out, 2.2% is still low by historical standards.
Of course, this is against the backdrop of the ever-worsening vacancy rate for office buildings. Across Los Angeles County, the office vacancy rate was 26.1% in the third quarter. That’s higher than the 25.3% in the previous quarter but nearly 5 points higher than the 21.3% in the same quarter last year.
The Insider is compiled by Editor-in-Chief Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
