A New 200-Room Hotel in the Works for Redondo Beach?
A San Francisco boutique hotel company has joined forces with developer Mar Ventures to bring a new hotel, spa and restaurant to King Harbor, the Daily Breeze reports. Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which owns 33 hotels mostly in Northern California, wants to build a 200-room hotel near Redondo Beach Marina, possibly at the site of Seaside Lagoon. A King Harbor fixture for at least four decades, the lagoon sits just north of the tired marina leasehold on Harbor Drive, between Portofino Way and the pier.
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L.A. Area Leads in Employers That Aren’t
One hundred workers count on Betsy Briones for their paychecks. But not one of them works for her, the Los Angeles Times reports. Briones is a so-called nonemployer, relying exclusively on contract or temporary workers. This arrangement, which allows employers to avoid the soaring costs of health insurance and other benefits, is booming in California, according to a Census Bureau report to be released today. Los Angeles County , a hotbed for small business , seems to be the capital of this “free agent nation.”
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Foreclosure Activity Takes Off
Foreclosure activity in California soared an annual 104.4 percent in the second quarter as the housing market slump deepened but the state remained near the national average in terms of filings, an industry tracker said Wednesday, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. In the April through June period, 27,606 property owners entered some stage of the foreclosure process across the state, the second most in the nation, said Irvine-based RealtyTrac.com. Texas had the most activity with 39,690. Activity in California declined 6.5 percent from the first quarter, the company said.
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Cities Awaiting Edison Signal on Wireless Networks
As cities across the nation roll out their own wireless Internet networks, some Southern California communities are hitting an unexpected bottleneck: Southern California Edison Co., the Los Angeles Times reports. The state’s second-largest power utility owns many of the residential street lights that cities need to form the backbone of their networks. But Edison acknowledges that it has yet to act on year-old requests for access to its poles and electricity.
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Teledyne Technologies to buy Rockwell Scientific
Teledyne Technologies Inc. has reached an agreement to purchase Rockwell Scientific Co. for $167.5 million in cash from Rockwell Automation Inc. and Rockwell Collins Inc., the Milwaukee Business Journal reports. Rockwell Automation, Milwaukee, and Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, have each owned 50 percent of Rockwell Scientific since Rockwell Collins was spun off from Rockwell International Corp. in 2001. The two companies will retain certain liabilities.
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Ante’s Up for Card Rooms
Cities and counties could allow more high-stakes games in card rooms if state lawmakers approve a controversial gambling bill when they return in August, the Sacramento Bee reports. The bill, by Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, would allow local governments to do away with wagering limits at card rooms, freeing gamblers to bet as much as they want on Texas Hold ’em, pai gow and other games. Supporters, including Attorney General Bill Lockyer, say the legislation would give local governments more control over betting limits. Limits have largely been frozen since the state imposed a 1996 moratorium on card room expansion.
Poll Says 70% of Californians Want Immigration Reform
A majority of California voters considers illegal immigration a very serious issue, and 70 percent want Congress to pass an immigration overhaul bill this year, according to a Field Poll released today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The statewide survey of 494 registered voters reached findings very similar to those in a national poll released Tuesday by the Tarrance Group and Lake Research Partners. That poll found that 71 percent of likely U.S. voters favor a comprehensive plan similar to a bill passed by the Senate in May.
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Doctors: Medicare Pays Us Too Little
At a House hearing this week on controlling payments to doctors for treating Medicare patients, members of the California congressional delegation raised an even bigger problem facing growing counties — payments so low that doctors are balking at taking on new clients as the number of senior citizens grows, the Sacramento Bee reports. The problem is so severe in Santa Cruz County that as of June 1, doctors there stopped taking new Medicare patients, said Elizabeth McNeil, director of federal affairs for the California Medical Association.
Amazon Ambitions
Amazon.com is going from peddler to producer. In its first feature-film venture, Amazon has optioned screen rights to Keith Donohue’s bestselling novel “The Stolen Child,” Variety reports Amazon will move to secure a filmmaker and then a studio partner to turn the fantasy into a live-action feature. Move marks the first foray of the world’s biggest online retailer into content creation not limited to its Web site.
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