Imagine being able to find all the city codes required for that office or studio you want to build in your backyard on one website – eliminating a trip to City Hall?
Enter Cover Technologies Inc. of Gardena and the new service it just launched on its website for City of Los Angeles homeowners.
The company designs and builds prefabricated accessory structures such as guest homes, offices and artist studios based on city codes it has downloaded into its proprietary software.
The free website-based service would provide homeowners planning to erect structures in their backyards with city-approved sizes and placement suggestions for various types of units.
“We utilized zoning, parcel and other city records as well as our own data to pinpoint what type of unit is allowed in a homeowner’s backyard,” co-founder Alex Rivas said.
The service, for now, is restricted to homes in the city of L.A., but Cover Technologies plans to expand the service to eventually include data from other cities in L.A. County, Rivas said.
“What’s great about this software is that it’ll save time for homeowners thinking about building an in-law unit,” he explained. “They won’t have to go down to the city to deal with gathering information on permits. We’ll do it for them.”
Cover Technologies also provides code-abiding sample unit designs.
“This is going to be cost-effective for a lot of people,” he said.
Cover’s prefabricated units start at $55,000 for a basic single-room space that can include plumbing and electricity. Structures can cost up to $500,000, depending on the customer’s customization needs, but its most popular units range between the $150,000 to $250,000 range, Rivas said.
Rivas and Jemuel Joseph founded the company in 2014. In 2016, the duo was accepted into Y Combinator, an early stage startup seed funder in Mountain View. Last May, at the end of the program, the company announced a $1.6 million seed round led by General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Fifty Years, Hyperspeed Ventures and other angel investors.
The company’s seven employees include architects, designers and software and manufacturing engineers.
Reliance Acquisition
Downtown-based metals distributor Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. announced March 1 its first purchase for 2018 as DuBose National Energy Services Inc. and its affiliate DuBose National Energy Fasteners & Machined Parts Inc., both of Cleveland, Ohio.
Reliance did not disclose the financial terms of the deal other than to say it was purchasing the companies’ issued and outstanding capital stock.
The Cleveland-based companies specialize in the supply and distribution of metal and metal products to the nuclear industry, and their purchase will increase Reliance’s supply chain and market share, which now is spread over the company’s 48 subsidiaries.
Reliance did not return calls for comment.
Chris Olin, an analyst at Independence, Ohio-based asset management firm Longbow Research, told the Business Journal last fall that Reliance controlled 10 to 12 percent of the domestic metal distribution market. Reliance has 300 locations in 39 U.S. states and 10 other countries, according to its website.
Analysts said that President Donald Trump’s recently announced plans to implement stiff tariffs on imported steel and aluminum – a 25 percent tax on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum – could be a bump in the road ahead for Reliance.
“The size of the tariff is quite substantial,” said John Forry, managing director in the Century City office of CBIZ MHM, an accounting and consulting firm.
Port Trucker Lawsuit
Truck drivers at the local Los Angeles and Long Beach ports filed a lawsuit against XPO Logistics Cartage in Los Angeles County Superior Court last month, seeking to have the company change the employment structure of port and rail truckers from independent contractors to employees.
The lawsuit, Alvarez vs. XPO Logistics Cartage, seeks more than $1 million in restitution of unpaid wages and deductions for more than 160 port and rail drivers who have worked for the company since April 2016.
XPO Cartage is a subsidiary of Greenwich, Conn.–based XPO Logistics Inc.
Staff reporter Shwanika Narayan can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 556-8351.
