Note: Portions of this column originally appeared online at the Business Journal website. Lost amid all the coverage two weeks ago about the Emirates A380 jet visiting Los Angeles was the why behind the airline’s decision to start service between Dubai and the West Coast. On-board showers and first-class seats converting into beds makes for good copy and even better visuals and was a publicity coup for the air carrier although the price for even an economy seat is out of reach for the average person reading the Los Angeles Times or Daily News coverage or seeing it on the TV news. Absent from the local coverage were people like Craig Hanna who fly to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on business and look forward to the start of the Los Angeles service in the fall. Right now, when Hanna goes to Dubai in his capacity as chief creative officer with Thinkwell Design & Production in Burbank, he flies to New York and then catches an Emirates flight to the Middle East. From the time he leaves home to when he arrives at his hotel room, about 24 hours elapses. He’s looking forward to shaving time off the trip by flying direct from L.A. For right now, only passengers on the New York flights will fly aboard the A380, the world’s largest passenger jet. The L.A. service starting in October will use the Boeing 777, perhaps not as luxurious as the Airbus jet but still featuring many of the amenities found on the larger plane. Los Angeles is the third city served by Emirates, with San Francisco becoming the fourth in December. Looking at the U.S. cities – and their major industries – the why behind the airline expansion of service becomes clear. New York has finances; Houston has oil; San Francisco has software and IT; and Los Angeles has entertainment. Others who will utilize the services include those providing construction and consulting services as well as U.S. citizens who have relocated to the United Arab Emirates and return regularly to visit family or their home corporate office, Hanna said There is apparently a significant amount of traffic. “It is hard to get a business class seat regardless of when you fly,” said Hanna. Thinkwell designs and installs experienced-based entertainment for theme parks, museums, and resort destinations around the world and the UAE provides plenty of work. The company had a hand in Ski Dubai, an indoor ski facility. Its current projects include the Warner Bros. Entertainment theme park in capital city Abu Dhabi and four others that Hanna cannot discuss because of confidentiality agreements. The Warner Bros. project was one of several that Southern California entertainment conglomerates have in the works. Universal Studios will open a theme park in 2010 with an estimated price tag of $2.2 billion. Paramount Pictures has licensed storylines and characters from its popular feature films to a real estate developer for a theme park to anchor a reported $2.5 billion resort development in Dubai. Another theme park based on the comic book action hero characters of Marvel Entertainment Inc. is scheduled to open in 2012. Elsewhere in the city are plans for a SeaWorld park; the $1 billion Burj Al Arab hotel; and the $5.5 billion Palm Island resort that involves creating three islands shaped like palm trees with luxury hotels and villas, and high-end shopping and entertainment venues. Little wonder that Thinkwell has a lot on its plate in the UAE and has as many as 125 employees working on projects there. Right now there are four full-time employees in its Dubai office with more to arrive in the next year. As the projects reach the construction and installation phases, still more employees will find themselves in the desert country. It all started with the Ski Dubai park mentioned earlier an indoor mountain with five ski runs. Thinkwell designed the Snow Park portion with sled and toboggan runs, a snowman-making area, and The Ice Cave play area. Being part of a completed project of that size confers a certain level of credibility that makes it easier to get more work in the country, said Thinkwell CEO Cliff Warner. “The strength of our relationships with all the major [film] studios seems to be popular with all the developers in the UAE,” Warner said. Coincidentally, the same week the Emirates A380 came to Los Angeles, Thinkwell received word it was an officially sanctioned business in the UAE. This means the company can operate in the media and entertainment free zone, one of a number of zones or clusters of specific industries. Building centers for healthcare, media, biotech, research and development, and hospitality diversifies the economy and shows that the major cities has more to offer than just oil production. The manifestations of that strategy can be immediately seen in the mega-projects that will create enough of a sense of destination and place that it is hoped will make the country a compelling place to visit. “Maybe not so much from [the U.S.] because it is so far, but certainly from India, Africa, Asia and Europe it is a four to six hour hop,” Hanna said. “The prices are reasonable. The Europeans love the weather in the winter months and being able to go someplace warm with all these exotic offerings.” More on the Airbus Tucked into a wall rack aboard the Emirates A380 was a copy of Viva magazine with a promotion to win passes to Ski Dubai. Considering the offerings available from the Emirates ICE (information, communication and entertainment) system, reading a magazine is a low-tech way to spend the 17 hours it takes to fly from the West Coast to Dubai. The ICE system offers 1,100 channels of on-demand video and audio. All seats include laptop power, a USB port, on-board phones for seat-to-seat calling and personal video screens. A curved staircase leads from the lower level economy class to the plane’s upper deck. In this lofty domain business and first class passengers secrete themselves, with access to a lounge and their individual seats with mini-bars and snack baskets. The seats convert into beds with a maximum length of 79 inches. The aircraft came to L.A. following stops in New York and San Francisco, landing to a crowd of several hundred invited guests and VIPs but absent a planned water cannon salute as the LAX fire trucks were pulled away in response to an emergency landing of an American Airlines jet. We learned that the title of “world’s largest passenger plane” doesn’t confer immunity from an outdated air traffic control system. A scheduled landing of 9:15 a.m. became 9:41 a.m. and then 10 a.m. The aircraft finally pulled up outside the Flight Path Museum at 10:03 a.m. While waiting, the crowd consumed coffee and juice; muffins, fruit kabobs and turkey croissant sandwiches while looking over the exhibits in the museum. Then finally the plane landed and what followed were speeches from a member of the governor’s staff (Schwarzenegger stayed in Sacramento to work on a budget); the state’s transportation and housing secretary, who stressed that growth and development at LAX meant growth and development for the entire region; and Gina Marie Lindsey, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, who said that LAX has been “re-imagined and reconstructed” to accommodate a new era of international travel as represented by the A380. The jets taking off on the runways made more noise than the idling metal behemoth just a few hundred feet behind the podium with the speakers. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected]. At 6′-6″ he would need a bulkhead seat to fly comfortably in an economy seat of the Emirates A380.

GLENDALE , Economic factors have created a deep funk in sales along Glendale’s Brand Boulevard of Cars, mirroring a national downturn in automobile purchases as customers continue to feel the pinch of an enduring housing slump, a pervasive credit crunch and soaring gasoline prices, officials said Thursday. Two government reports released this week exemplify the troubles facing the auto industry. For the full story visit www.glendalenewspress.com/articles/2008/08/15/news/gnp-autosales15.txt

LANCASTER – Mayor R. Rex Parris on Tuesday scheduled a closed-session discussion for the council’s next meeting to explore efforts to recoup a portion of the money granted as severance to former City Manager Bob LaSala. Parris, an attorney, said he is convinced a severance agreement that included a six-month termination notice plus an 18-month severance period for LaSala exceeded a limit set by the Legislature. “The law in this state is pretty clear that a city manager can have an 18-month separation agreement, and anything above that and beyond that is a violation of the law,” Parris said. “That’s how I read it.” For the full story visit www.avpress.com/n/15/0815_s3.hts

California’s unemployment rate in July continued its upward flight, rising to 7.3%, a four-tenths of a percentage point jump from its June level, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday. It was the worst unemployment showing since July 1996 when the Golden State was still recovering from a deep recession that began in the early 1990s. Last month, there was a net loss of nearly 15,000 jobs as ongoing slowdowns in construction, real estate and the financial services industries continued to take their toll. For the full story visit www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-caljobs16-2008aug16,0,178127.story

Cherokee Inc. of Van Nuys has signed a sponsorship agreement that will have beach volleyball Olympian Todd Rogers promoting its SIDEOUT brand in Beijing. Rogers and his partner Phil Dalhausser are odds-on favorites to medal in their event which means SIDEOUT will be getting a lot of television exposure. In a prepared statement Rogers said, “I’m born and bred in Southern California and grew up with SIDEOUT.”

The governors of 10 states along the U.S.-Mexico border gathered in Universal Studios for a conference on environmental protection, climate change and building commerce in the border region. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger served as chair of the 26th annual Border Governors Conference that began Aug. 13, placing particular emphasis on the benefits of building green economies throughout the border region. Event partner General Electric helped underscore the economic and environmental benefits of establishing the border region as a leader in innovative, clean technology. Moreover, nearly 70 clean-tech companies from both sides of the border displayed their products, including electric cars, solar-powered flashlights and non-toxic cleaning products, at the BGC’s first ever Green Technology Exposition. Other issues to be discussed include border infrastructure and security, water management, economic development and emergency response and disaster preparedness.

Software developer CaminoSoft Corp. returned to profitability for the third quarter when compared to a year ago. The Westlake Village-based firm reported net income of $71,000, or $0.005 per diluted share, on revenues of $432,000 for the quarter ending June 30. For the same period a year ago, the company had a net loss of $67,000, or $0.005 per diluted share, on revenues of $695,000. For the nine months of the fiscal year, CaminoSoft had a net loss of $131,000, or $0.01 per diluted share, on revenues of $1.2 million. That is a decrease from the net loss of $410,000, or $0.03 per diluted share, on revenues of $1.7 million for the first nine months of the 2007 fiscal year.

Elecronic Sensor Technology received an order from China for six of its detection units. The order brings to more than 80 the number of chemical vapor detectors developed by the Newbury Park-based company used in China. The latest detectors will be used for the detection of illegal drugs. The company’s experience in China shows the versatility of Electronic Sensor detectors, said President and CEO Teong Lim.

While high oil and gas prices are motivating many industries to trim costs, they are driving oil companies to drill more and squeeze as much as they can out of existing wells. The Ventura County oil industry stands out as an exception in today’s tough economic climate by adding jobs and ramping up production with new equipment. Although crude oil futures are down from more than $147 a barrel in July, prices are still high. Light, sweet crude dipped $1.44 to settle at $113.01 a barrel Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the full story visit www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/aug/13/oil-drilling-on-rise-in-county-jobs-added/

Drugstore chain operator CVS Caremark Corp., the largest provider of prescriptions in the country, said Tuesday that it would acquire Longs Drug Stores Corp. for about $2.6 billion. Under the agreement, CVS would pay $71.50 a share in cash for Longs’ 521 drugstores, which are in California, Hawaii, Nevada and Arizona, as well as its RxAmerica subsidiary, a prescription benefits management program. The combination is a natural, Longs Chief Executive Warren F. Bryant said. For the full story visit www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-longs13-2008aug13,0,2569550.story