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The government’s economic stimulus program begins April 28, and William Pearson of Los Angeles is ready to receive his $600 tax rebate — and hoard it. “I’m too afraid to spend it,” Pearson, 63, said last week. “No one knows where gas or food is going to go, and I’m uncertain about making it through the summer.” The Internal Revenue Service will begin sending rebates via electronic direct deposit today and mailing checks starting May 9. President Bush said last week the $110 billion that 130 million households should receive by midsummer would help offset high gasoline and food prices and “give our economy a boost to help us pull out of the economic slowdown.” For the full story visit http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rebate28apr28,1,4131034.story

The gut-and-rehab of the 6-story office building at 14500 Roscoe Blvd. in Panorama City owned by Roscoe Investments LLC is now complete and CB Richard Ellis brokers have started leasing space. The 14,500-squarefoot fourth floor is now occupied by Premier Business Centers, an executive suites firm. Most recently, CBRE signed a lease with AT & T; to install a retail store on the ground floor. The 5-year deal is for approximately 4,500 square feet on the ground floor, at $3.75 per square foot, triple net. The lessor was represented by CB Richard Ellis brokers Nancy Stark and John La Spada, who are representatives for the building; assisted by James Rodriguez and Juan Jimenez who handled the retail lease. The lessee was represented by CBRE broker Carlos Diaz. According to Senior Associate La Spada, it is now, for all intents and purposes, a brand new building. In addition to installing new electrical and plumbing, solar panels were added to the rooftop. “We are told that the solar will offer a savings of 20 percent to 25 percent on electrical costs overall,” he said. With the building located in an enterprise zone, there are additional incentives available to prospective tenants, which may soon include a “government group (that) is looking at about 6,000 square feet,” said La Spada. Racing to Thousand Oaks MB2 Raceway, owners of the only indoor kart racing facility in Los Angeles County, will now also be the only indoor kart racing facility in Ventura County. The Sylmar-based company has finalized its lease of 58,700 square feet at the Conejo Spectrum business park in Thousand Oaks. Jerry Scullin and David Hoffberg, COO and senior vice president, respectively, of Van Nuys-based Delphi Business Properties, represented MB2 in the $6 million, 10- year lease for part of a larger industrial building at 1475 Lawrence Drive. Developers Voit Conejo Partners LLC were represented by Nick Gregg and Ken Ashen of CB Richard Ellis. On A Roll Dynaroll Corporation, an independent supplier of miniature bearings to the automotive, medical and aerospace industries, has purchased a 41,536-square-foot industrial building at 12840 Bradley Ave. in Sylmar. The transaction was valued at more than $5.3 million and the buyer was represented by Chad Gahr and David Young, SIOR of NAI Capital’s Encino office. Daum Commercial brokers Mike LaRocque, SIOR and Lynn Laroque represented the sellers, Haskell andWilma Hall. In another Daum-NAI transaction, Vibra Finish Company, a supplier of vibratory media and mass finishing supplies, were represented in selling their refurbished, 41,536-square-foot industrial building at 12840 Bradley Ave. in Sylmar by Daum’s Mike LaRoque. No word from buyers’ reps Gahr and Young about what new owner Anderon Holdings, LLC has planned for the property. Gahr and Young also represented Forest Lawn Mortuary in leasing out a 41,250-squarefoot industrial building at 3061 Treadwell St. in Los Angeles to Riverfront Stages, Inc. The 63-month lease is valued at more than $1.7 million. The facility will be Riverfront’s second sound stage in the area: Gahr and Young also represented the company in negotiating the lease for their original Sylmar facility. Affordable Housing A 10-bay, coin-operated car wash located on two parcels at 8925 and 8933 Glenoaks Blvd. has been acquired by Glenoaks Gardens LP, an entity of North Hollywood-based L.A. Family Housing reports Capital Realty Solutions principal Ash Joshi. The 34,225-square-feet of land sold for $2.7 million. The new owners plan to develop 61 units of affordable housing on the property, said Joshi who represented both the seller, Alex Leyton Trust, and the buyer in the transaction. The nonprofit L.A. Family Housing owns and operates 21 properties in Los Angeles County, with 16 being in the San Fernando Valley. Lawyers Expand Law firm Loewenthal, Hillshafer & Rosen LLP will be adding an extra 1,100 square feet to its existing office space at 15260 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, bringing their total occupied space to 8,447 square feet. The expansion lease is valued at about $1.75 million, according to Thomas N. Specker, a principal in the Calabasas office of Lee & Associates- LA North/Ventura, Inc., who represented the law firm. Landlord Douglas Emmett Management was represented by in-house representative Carol DeFore. New Park Has Four Sales Four new deals have closed at the Bollinger Office Park in Newbury Park with a total value of $6 million. Two buildings, 3311 and 3307 Old Conejo Road, encompassing approximately 3,387 square feet, were purchased by ear, nose and throat specialist Dr. Gary Zerlin. This will be the second practice for Zerlin whose first clinic is in Bakersfield. The doctor will have as his neighbor the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Conejo Valley. The UU Fellowship purchased 3327 and 3331 Old Conejo Road and will be installing 12,894 square feet of sanctuary, classroom, meeting and office space on the property. Mike Tingus, president and managing partner of Lee & Associates- LA North/Ventura, Inc., is marketing the business park for developer Telair-Wendy Road LLC, in collaboration with Lee Calabasas associates Cory Richmond and Grant Fulkerson. Condos Out, Seniors In Gangi Development of Burbank has received a 9-month extension of its exclusive negotiating agreement with the City of San Fernando to allow changes to the project. The developer of the mixed-use development is now proposed to replace the originally-planned condominiums with affordable senior housing. Stay Tuned Next issue we’ll be digging into the latest San Fernando Valley office and industrial market first quarter reports recently released by Colliers International. Staff Reporter Linda Coburn can be reached at (818) 316-3123 or at [email protected].

Few companies in the Valley fall into the biotech domain, but the ones who do have a huge economic impact on the community. By some estimates, the biotech industry supplies nearly 9,000 jobs in the area. Amgen spokeswoman Sarah Rockwell said that the Thousand Oaks-based company employs 6,800 people. And Thousand Oaks Economic Development manager Gary Wartik says that the biotech giant provides an additional 400 contract jobs. Moreover, Baxter Bioscience, part of Baxter Pharmaceuticals, employs about 1,100, according to Wartik, while a smaller biotech company named Ceres employs about 160. Factor into those figures the amount of miscellaneous companies founded in recent years by former Amgen employees who decided to strike out on their own, and you have about 9,000 jobs total, Wartik said. Amgen refused to disclose the average salary of its employees, but Business Journal sources estimated that the mean yearly pay is at least six figures. Mark Schniepp, director of the Santa Barbara-based California Economic Forecast, believes that the average salary of employees at Amgen and other biotech companies is over $100,000. And he believes that even that number is a conservative estimate. “Biotech tends to be very high paying,” he said. That’s why Schniepp felt it was important to point out that the non-scientists of the biotech company employee pool, such as receptionists and janitors, bring the average salary down. “Some of the top scientific people are getting $150,000 to $200,000,” he said. Whatever the exact figure is, Schniepp said that it affects the base salary for all employees in Conejo Valley and surrounding areas. “There are years when they pay a big bonus,” he said. “It really impacts the average salary, and there’s no doubt, if Amgen and Baxter weren’t there, the average salary in the county would be lower. They raise the average salary.” Wartik speculated that, if the average income of local biotech employees is $125,000, “We’re looking at $109 million dollars just in salaries,” he said. “That number is probably double if you use a multiplier factor of approximately five. That tells you how many times the dollar is generated through that time, circulated in that community. That pre-supposes everyone in those jobs works in Thousand Oaks. We know that’s not true, but they live generally between Camarillo and Calabasas, with a small number in Simi Valley and Agoura Park, so east Ventura County and Western Los Angeles County.” In this area alone, hundreds of millions of dollars are generated by biotech, Wartik said. Amgen generated $14.5 billion in worldwide sales in 2007, Wartik went on. While the company no longer does much manufacturing in Thousand Oaks, the City benefits because it is still the heart of Amgen’s management and research and development work. “They do create a lot of additional businesses,” Bill Watkins, executive director of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Economic Forecast, said of Amgen. “Employees spend their money here, and that’s one reason Thousand Oaks has had, over time, strong retail sales. There’s a certain impact on house prices. They obviously add a lot to the gross product.” Support services The company also generates a large amount of needs for support services, Watkins asserted. Because of how spectacular Amgen’s campus is alone, he said, Amgen has created countless construction jobs over the years. “It’s a key component of the Conejo Valley economy,” Watkins said. “It would be a completely different place without it. They are the 800-pound gorilla. Biotech certainly has a huge impact on the people of Thousand Oaks,” Schniepp and Wartik agreed. “They can accommodate the kind of housing that’s in the area as well as very important economic sectors,” Schniepp said. Wartik called biotech significant, both in current jobs and growth potential. Even former Amgen employees play a role in giving the community an economic boost, he feels. “We have in Thousand Oaks, hundreds of former Amgen employees who are part of our community,” he said. “Their children go to our schools. The former employees shop here. They have homes and are looking to stay in this community, so people are looking for opportunities to form a business, to contribute to the life and sciences industry and make a good living.” Wartik cited attorney Brent Reinke, co-founder of The Biotech Forum, an organization formed to facilitate the development and growth of a biotech cluster in the 101 Corridor, as playing a major role in unifying those who seek to expand the biotechnology and life science field in the Thousand Oaks vicinity. He’s also identified people who are willing to help fund and invest in that process, Wartik said. Rallying the community around the industry is crucial because biotech affects everything here, according to Reinke. “From retail to home prices to everything else,” he said. “Partly, why there’s such a strong interest to try to facilitate the development of additional bioscience (companies) is because of the economic impact.” But Reinke also feels that the skills of biotech employees many of whom have advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, the life sciences and mathematics and were brought in to deal with the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies have skill sets that may benefit other industries. Because of this, Reinke even has a positive outlook on the employees laid off by Amgen last fall. “Maybe an increase in the labor pool might be helpful to other businesses,” he said. “There are companies that might benefit that aren’t strictly biotech. They have needs that can be fulfilled from people coming out of Amgen, (whose) biotech backgrounds can probably overlap into other areas, too.” Bill Burrato, president and CEO of the Ventura County Economic Development Association, felt similarly to Reinke about the importance of the local biotech cluster in the region. “The whole idea of a biotech incubator is beginning to catch on in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley area,” he said. “If we can provide that, we can continue to grow the industry here. And if we don’t, the downside is that many of those people are going to gravitate towards other places,San Diego and elsewhere. From a regional and economic development perspective, we’re certainly aware of that and trying to address these needs.”

As documentary filmmaker John Scheinfeld tracks the Chicago Cubs during the current season, he insists he is not making a film about baseball. When completed later this year, the film, tentatively titled “We Believe: Chicago and Its Cubs” will have broader appeal outside the Midwest and outside the confines of that peculiar group of fandom turning out season after season for a team whose rich history centers more on losing than winning. It may even strike a chord with beach ball bouncing Dodgers fans or insecure White Sox fans whose team, despite winning a World Series in 2005, still must play second fiddle to the Cubs. “We are going to take this film in some interesting places to make it something of interest to anyone who loves their team and anybody who’s loved their city,” said Scheinfeld, whose production offices are based in Studio City. Scheinfeld has done much of his documentary work with partner David Leaf, including “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” released in theaters in 2006. For “We Believe” he strikes out on his own and produces the film under a name other than the Authorized Pictures banner that released the Lennon doc. For a film on a Chicago baseball team, Scheinfeld centers all activities in that city from the financing to the crew to the post-production, music, accounting and website design. Scheinfeld remains on the West Coast with periodic trips back as the season progresses. While on paper “We Believe” appears to have a limited appeal, Scheinfeld is confident his approach will transcend sports fans. The John Lennon documentary was made in the same way, not as a straight biography or a rock and roll story but instead focusing on the political climate in which the former Beatle navigated in the early 1970s and incurring the wrath of the Nixon administration. In recent years other independent documentaries on topics with limited appeal found success if not at the box office at least with audiences and critics. “Spellbound,” a 2003 film on a children’s spelling bee brought in $5.5 million in its theatrical release. Three years later “Wordplay,” a small film about crossword puzzles and the quirky personalities taking part in crossword competitions brought in $2.9 million in its two month theatrical release. An overlooked gem from 2007 was the “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” a documentary on the surface about two men vying for the world record on the Donkey Kong video game but really is about much more. The personal stories of the real-life characters made “King of Kong” appealing, Scheinfeld said. “That’s the same approach I’m taking (with “We Believe”),” Scheinfeld said. “It’s going to have these personal stories threaded through it.” The origin of “We Believe” sprung from a conversation between Scheinfeld and a friend in Chicago, an investment banker, about future film projects. The friend suggested as a documentary topic that the Cubs last won a World Series in 1908. To Scheinfeld that smacked too much of an ESPN-type project. The love affair between a city and its National League baseball team and the notion of what makes Chicago and Cubs fans unique intrigued him more. A treatment for the film met with approval from the Cubs organization, which is providing the access to the players and management Scheinfeld needs to tell his story. The seven players chosen for interviews were those whose stories give drama threaded through the course of the film. Along with fiery manager Lou Piniella, Scheinfeld talked with Kerry Wood, a former starting pitching struggling to stay relevant as he re-invents himself as a closer (“He said this to me this was the first time he had been pain free in about five years.”); Kosuke Fukodome, the Japanese star in his first season on an American team, (“A surprisingly funny guy,” Scheinfeld said); and Mark DeRosa, an infielder whose irregular heartbeat brought a scare during spring training. Spending time with the team in Arizona before the season began Scheinfeld described it as a team that likes each other, likes playing together, and is not concerned with the past. But can the same be true about its fans? A certain segment exists in the Cub Nation that takes perverse pleasure in flagellating themselves with fixations over mistakes from the past and rolling them all into the convenient and media-friendly “curse” banned billy goats in 1945; black cats in 1969; a ball rolling between the legs of first baseman Leon Durham in 1984; shortstop Alex Gonzalez flubbing a routine double-play and then- manager Dusty Baker refusing to calm down pitcher Mark Prior in 2003. The film, however, isn’t strictly about the fans or their point of view of the team Other documentaries have taken that approach, “Wait ‘Til Next Year” shown on HBO in 2006, for instance, and Scheinfeld didn’t want to repeat what had already been done. Instead, he went to cultural commentators, historians, sports writers, and Chicago and Illinois politicians to round out the picture. “We needed an A-list of people to talk about the city and team from a wide variety of perspectives,” Scheinfeld said. With full financing in hand, Scheinfeld can make the film he wants. The best-case scenario is for the Cubs to make it to and win the World Series and finish the film in time for screening at Sundance in early 2009. Theatrical distribution would follow and then a sale to television and for the DVD market. But even if the Cubs fail (again) in the century long quest for a world championship, the dynamics taking place between Chicago and the team fascinate Scheinfeld. “This is going to be smart and thought provoking and entertaining at the same time,” Scheinfeld said. Protecting Music A pending bill before Congress to beef up penalties for illegal downloads should pass, Rep. Adam Schiff told an audience of songwriters and composers. Appearing at the ASCAP Expo in Hollywood this month, Schiff added that the bill boosts federal anti-piracy efforts and provides grants for local law enforcement. While those methods are a help in fighting illegal music piracy a major deterrent is letting potential violators know that the government is serious about catching them. “What is more effective is the likelihood of getting caught,” said Schiff, a federal prosecutor before entering politics. Schiff sits on the subcommittee for Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property chaired by Rep. Howard Berman, whose district includes part of the San Fernando Valley. Schiff’s district includes Burbank and Glendale. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at mmadler@ sfvbj.com . He first visited Wrigley Field in 1973 (Cubs vs. Atlanta Braves) and is convinced he will be too old to enjoy when the Cubs finally win a World Series.

Universal City The Valley Industry & Commerce Association (VICA) in Sherman Oaks will have its inaugural San Fernando Valley Business Hall of Fame dinner June 12 at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. Wells Fargo is presenting the event, during which the first-ever inductees , Bob’s Big Boy, Daily News of Los Angeles, Bob Hope Airport, Voit Development Company and William Mulholland , will be honored. “These inductees are truly amazing and have done so much to contribute to the region’s economic prosperity and unique civic culture,” stated VICA Chair Greg Lippe. The late William Mulholland has the distinction of being the only individual VICA is honoring. The former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power head designed the first Los Angeles Aqueduct that delivered water to the City of Los Angeles from the Owens Valley. VICA credits this move with allowing the Valley to grow into a major economic center that is home to 1.8 million people. Bob’s Big Boy has roots dating to 1936, when Bob Wian opened a 10-seat diner called “Bob’s Pantry” in Glendale. Today, the restaurant’s oldest location is in Burbank, and it continues to attract hundreds of car-enthusiasts on Friday night, dubbed “Cruise Nights.” Known as United Airport when it opened in 1930, Bob Hope Airport in Burbank was home to a number of aerospace companies through World War II and the Cold War. Today, it serves millions of travelers on commercial and private flights, linking them to hundreds of nationwide destinations. The Daily News of Los Angeles is the oldest organization VICA will honor. It started as the “Van Nuys Call” in 1911. Older Valley natives may remember the Daily News as the Valley News and “Green Sheet,” which featured an extensive classified ad section. Since 1981, however, the publication has been called the Daily News of Los Angeles. Despite the new moniker, the paper continues to cover the Valley extensively. The youngest organization named as an inductee is commercial real estate services company Voit Development, founded by Robert D. Voit in 1971. Voit has the distinction of having developed Warner Center Plaza and Warner Center Business Park, in addition to Van Nuys retail center, “The Plant,” and the Marvin Braude Constituent Center. For information on the Business Hall of Fame Dinner, contact (818) 817-0545 or www.vica.com. SAN FERNANDO VALLEY Burbank Construction: Healthcare builder McCarthy Building Companies Inc. has completed construction of the steel structure for the Roy and Patricia Disney Cancer Center, located at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center. McCarthy is building the four-story, 57,469-sq.-foot center facility with a moment frame structure in order to withstand seismic events. This construction is challenging due to the tight site; the building is only eight inches away from an existing parking structure on two sides, according to the company. Interesting features include three-foot-thick walls will surround two linear accelerators and one tomography suite, and a cooling system with thermal storage tanks, that will produce ice at night and use the ice as a chilled water source during peak daytime cooling hours. La Crescenta Winner: Clark Magnet High School in La Crescenta is one of three Los Angeles-area winners of the $50,000 Lexus Environmental Challenge, a national competition promoted by Lexus and Scholastic to educate teens on the environment. Nationally, 55 teams competed for the final prizes which were awarded to 14 schools. The school will receive a grant for $10,000; the teacher-advisor will receive a $5,000 grant; and the team of five students will share $35,000 in scholarships. The five-student team from Clark created a presentation on the effectiveness of “no-take zones” in the preservation of marine life, using Geographic Information System (GIS) software to compare and document biodiversity inside and outside of marine protected areas. North Hills SFVAAC: More than 80 students in Monroe High School’s School of Engineering and Design visited 16 aviation and aerospace businesses in the San Fernando Valley April 3 and were offered internships or positions with the companies. Participating businesses included Gorko Industries Inc., Hawker Beechcraft Services, Northrop Grumman Corp., Pentastar Aviation, Plateronics Processing; Pratt & Whitney, Schrillo Company and Syncro Aircraft Interiors Inc. All businesses belong to the San Fernando Valley Aviation-Aerospace Collaborative (SFVAAC), the nation’s first regional industry-specific collaborative to partner with a public high school to promote aviation and aerospace careers for students; and to create a new community development agenda that understands, supports and values the re-emergence of the San Fernando Valley’s Aviation-Aerospace industry and its contribution to the region’s socio-economic health. Northridge Screening: Oscar-winning filmmaker Ari Sandel presented his 20-minute musical comedy “West Bank Story” April 28 in the Oviatt Library of California State University, Northridge. The film explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict explained through the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands. During his visit to CSUN, the director explained his quirky perspective on the Middle East conflict. Panorama City Launch: Kaiser Permanente celebrated the opening of its new hospital in Panorama City this weekend with an event called “Festival of Health” April 26. The festival included healthful eating and active living demonstrations, children’s activities and entertainment such as yoga, salsa dancing, a bounce house, rock wall and a hula-hoop contest. Kaiser Permanente leadership, health educators and community members participated in the event, which took place at Kaiser Permanente Panorama City Medical Center, 13651 Willard Street, Panorama City. Van Nuys Gala: Valley Presbyterian Hospital (VPH) is hosting its 50th Anniversary Gala May 21, 6 p.m., to benefit new technology improvements at the hospital. The event, honoring David W. Fleming, chairman of the Board of Trustees at Valley Presbyterian, will be held at the LACMA’s new Broad Contemporary Art Museum, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Costanza on the TV series, Seinfeld, will emcee. The gala will feature an old-fashioned razzing of Fleming and special recognition of Valley Presbyterian’s former chiefs of staff. Guests will enjoy cocktails, dinner and reminisce to the sounds of a live do wop band. Tickets, sponsorships and tables are currently available for the business attire gala. To become an event sponsor or to purchase a table at the event, contact the Foundation Department at (818) 902-2980 or [email protected]. Woodland Hills Farmwalk: The Agriculture Department of Pierce College presents its annual Farmwalk, May 4, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the college, 6201 Winnetka Ave., Woodland Hills. Councilman Dennis P. Zine will be the featured guest and sponsor. Firefighters will also be in attendance with their fire engines. The fire department and forestry division will also be in hand. The event will include several animals, sheep shearing, wool spinning, live music, cow milking, a petting zoo and more. Donation is $5. Children under 12 do not pay an admission fee. ANTELOPE VALLEY Palmdale Honor: Three City of Palmdale employees were honored with certificates of recognition for their years of public service April 16 at the Palmdale City Council meeting in the Council Chambers of City Hall. Mayor Jim Ledford made the presentations to Administrative Technician Sandra Woolbert for her 25 years of service and to Supervising Building Inspector Dennis Dininger and Assistant City Manager Laurie Lile who each have 20 years of service with the City. “We recognize employees that have significant time with the City,” Ledford said. “The strength of our organization is fabulous because we have great people capable of doing great things working for us.” CONEJO VALLEY Thousand Oaks Training: California Lutheran University trained counselors and others to respond to shootings and other violent situations on school campuses April 26 during an event called “Responding to Critical Incidents in Educational Settings.” Organizers invited CLU Counseling and Guidance Program students and counselors already working in schools, as well as college student affairs professionals to participate. Some campus safety administrators and teachers also took part. In the morning, James Graves, Performance Management Associates, trained participants to diffuse and debrief students. In the afternoon, K-12 counselors received training in Violent Intruder Police Educator Response from police facilitator Gene Bennett. Philip Mullendore, director of The Institute for Campus Safety and executive director of the California College and University Police Chiefs Association, covered college safety and preparedness.

There aren’t many places that educate the future designers, pattern makers, milliners, and stylists of the future, but the Valley can lay claim to two institutions offering four-year degrees in the field: Woodbury University and California State University, Northridge. The fashion design program at Woodbury’s Burbank campus has a long history, going back to at least the early 1930s when it started as a costume design program at what was then called Woodbury Business College. Although costume design is a smaller part of the curriculum now, assistant professor Louise Coffey-Webb has every intention of growing it again. “What I’m learning is that costume designers need good people,” she said, “and they need people with a good, rounded education and lots of varied skills and that’s one thing we offer.” The fashion design program, which has about 100 students enrolled per semester, offers graduates a bachelor of fine arts degree, unlike its neighbor to the south, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, more commonly called just FIDM. “FIDM does not offer a BFA degree,” said Coffey-Webb, “just an AA in fashion design. And also they’re a for-profit institution. I think it makes a big difference.” Another design program, at American University in West L.A., is rumored to be closing while Otis College of Art and Design (formerly Otis Parsons) down near LAX has more of an emphasis on the artistic side of design. CSUN is the only other educational institution in the Valley that also offers a bachelor’s degree program similar to Woodbury. With a very small percentage of actual jobs available for fashion designers, Woodbury wants its students to have the skills they will need to fill the multitude of other jobs in the industry. “I would like to say that we’re a really good blend between the academic and the trade,” Coffey-Webb said. “We’ve been turning out very skilled students who can design from scratch and construct and make patterns and all that and I think we should expand that.” Graduates go into all aspects of the design industry. Some become costumers while others become stylists, assistant designers, or pattern makers. Woodbury alumnae are currently working at places like St. John (Irvine), BCBG/Max Azaria (Vernon), swimwear designer Robin Piccone (West L.A.), and the Valley’s own Juicy Couture (Arleta). To complete the program, students must create a collection, which is then judged by a panel of industry experts who review and critique the work and suggest which garments should go into the annual fashion show that is a major fundraising event. “One of the things that I like to remind people,” said Coffey-Webb, “is that the architecture students, they don’t have to build a house to graduate; whereas our students have to create their own line and make it themselves and do everything themselves, and I think that’s something.” The 44th Annual Fashion Show and Gala will take place on May 4 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Proceeds benefit the Woodbury scholarship program. Fashion as a business Woodbury is also known for their business programs and the perfect melding can be found in the university’s fashion marketing program. “Fashion marketing is a business major,” said Marketing Department Chair Karen Kaigler-Walker, Ph.D. “We are in the School of Business which is very unique.” About 60 students each semester are taught the fundamentals of fashion merchandising, promotion and trend analysis, marketing theory, consumer behavior and international business. They follow an MBA-prep program, Kaigler-Walker said, and many do go on to get their MBA, or other advanced degree, before entering the workforce. Woodbury is working on getting the fashion marketing degree accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. “When we get this, we will be the only fashion marketing degree in the world that’s AACSB accredited,” Kaigler-Walker said. “They are really the gold standard for business school accreditation.” Being a fashion marketing major can lead to some pretty interesting internships. In the last year, she said, students have worked on “American Idol” and ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters.” Others go into fashion journalism. One of the program’s top graduating students last year (Gabrielle Tompkins) is now working on her masters in journalism at Northwestern where she hopes to focus on covering the fashion industry. But styling for the media is one of the primary career destinations for Woodbury students. “Everything you see on TV, even on “American Idol” where it looks like they just walk on stage wearing anything: it’s all styled,” said Kaigler-Walker. Woodbury’s marketing students are schooled in the social sciences as well as business and marketing. This helps them in being able to read a script and then create the right mood or attitude for the show, or the individual scenes, through their choices of clothes, accessories and props. “And that is marketing,” said Kaigler-Walker. “That is being able to understand the client, and give them what they want making the production company happy and meeting the budget. These are marketing demands.” The state’s secret weapon The design program at California State University, Northridge, may very well be its best-kept secret. A search for “fashion” on the CSUN website yields just about nothing. That’s because you have to search for “apparel,” which yields a link to the Apparel Design and Merchandising web page on the department of Family and Consumer Sciences website. CSUN offers both a bachelor of science degree in family and consumer sciences, and a masters degree. “We have three specialties: production and design, merchandising, and textiles,” said Dr. Jongeun Kim. “We have about 350 students in the ADM program and it keeps on growing.” The department has been around for more than 20 years, said Kim. Some of its students are now teaching at colleges like Woodbury, the Fashion Institute of Design Management downtown, Santa Monica Community College and Pasadena City College. While they don’t offer a business degree, CSUN’s merchandising students do take some business, marketing and economics classes as part of their curriculums, she said. Last week, a group of students comprising the Trends fashion club, put on their annual fashion show, complete with a runway, models, a DJ, and more than a hundred family, friends and faculty cheering them on. ADM students Shannan Marie Dunlap and Amy Agajanian co-directed the show with Kim as faculty advisor. Dunlap, 24, is president of the Trends fashion club, the student-run organization that planned and produced the event. “It’s taken months of planning,” said Dunlap, with the show costing “about a few thousand dollars.” The proceeds from the ticket sales “are going straight into our campus account, and will be carried over for the next semester,” she said. The reason for the show, said Kim, is to give the students a chance to show-off their class work.. More than 60 models of all shapes, sizes and colors strutted the runway over a two-hour time span. They walked with confidence, stopping, turning and posing like pros. Musical performances punctuated the pauses between collections, giving the models time to get into their next outfits. Some industry professionals were brought in to judge the offerings including attorney Crystal A. Zarpas, partner of Mann & Zarpas, LLP in Sherman Oaks who specializes in apparel industry law and who also judged the event last year. “The show was very professionally done,” said Zarpas the next morning. “I’m always surprised at the level of creativity in the kids.”

By THOM SENZEE Contributing Reporter At the beginning of the end of aerospace’s role as this region’s dominant industry, a growing pharmaceutical company in Thousand Oaks was preparing to invade the conscience of healers and investors around the world by introducing the first ever bio-based therapeutic drugs. Thus, for almost two decades, Amgen cast a sweeping shadow on the local business landscape and became the most important driver of the Conejo Valley’s economy. Now, some say belatedly, the so-called “Biotech Corridor” along Interstate 101 near Amgen, is poised to sprout dozens of pioneering new life-sciences firms, with lineages traceable to the Amgen of the early 1980s when the small company set out on a path to the top of the biologically-derived, human-therapeutics business. “It’s inescapable,” says Brent Reinke, a corporate partner at the Westlake Village office of law firm Musick, Peeler and Garrett, and co-founder of The Biotech Forum. “The history of the 101 Biotech Corridor is the history of Amgen.” And the history of Amgen is a classic road trip along the highway of American entrepreneurial ingenuity. Indulging the road trip metaphor a step further puts the Amgen story, as well as that of dozens of other biotech companies, on a stretch of Interstate 101 from Westlake Village to the south and Camarillo to the north. The corridor’s center-point, in terms of activity if not geography, is Thousand Oaks: world headquarters for Amgen. “Amgen is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world,” says Reinke. “And they run themselves like they are a very large corporation. And they are even with Baxter and some others here the anchor of the region.” Applied Molecular Genetics was launched in 1980 with George B. Rathman as its CEO. The company was small, focused on science, and had a fiercely competitive spirit. But what made AMGen (note the single word with multiple capital letters, a branding syntax that took off in the late 1980s and is still popular today, but which the pharmaceutical giant abandoned to become simply Amgen in 1983) special, say early members of the company’s staff, was its focus on a team-oriented, project-driven business model, and a truly entrepreneurial culture. Back in the day “It was a little like coming to the Wild West,” said Robin Campbell. a microbiologist who joined Amgen in 1989 as a marketing manager. “All good ideas were listened to. Everybody assumed there was not only one right way to do something.” That open-mindedness extended from conducting clinical trials and getting FDA approvals, to business affairs and marketing campaigns, says Dr. Campbell, who earned his Ph.D. from Wake Forest University, and was recruited to Amgen from the Swiss firm, Ciba-Geigy. By the time Campbell joined Amgen, the company was in its ninth year, employed 667 people, and was growing quickly,very quickly. In 1980 there were just three Amgen employees. Three years after Campbell came to Amgen there would be thousands. All of the veteran Amgen employees interviewed for this article said the company’s Thousand Oaks headquarters was an “incredibly energized” place to work during late 80s and 90s. The energy kept building. “We kept growing,” Campbell recalls. “George (Rathman) and Gordon (Binder) gave people a lot of authority to drive the process and try some things that were really new. It was a place for intellectual exercises, where you created a group of really dedicated and powerfully incentivized people working with new drugs in new areas where people had never worked before.” Gordon Binder succeeded George Rathman as CEO in 1988. Binder further shepherded the company on a blinding growth track so that by the time his successor, Kevin Sharer, took the reins in 1992 Amgen would mark its first billion-dollar sales year. But the year before that, 1991, Amgen’s ranks of scientist-MBAs had entered a new era of exponential growth. Among the new hires was a top-tier UCLA- and Berkeley-trained engineer with you guessed it, an MBA, who had also served abroad in the U.S. Navy during the Reagan era. “In 1991 I got a call from a headhunter representing Amgen,” recalls Keith Leonard. “I thought, ‘Who are these guys?'” But Leonard soon realized the opportunity he was being offered. “It’s good to be good; sometimes it’s better to be lucky,” Leonard said. Kevin Sharer ran Amgen the “General Electric way,” he adds. “Kevin came from General Electric and brought a kind of GE approach to grooming general managers. I was really lucky I got a chance to have a number of different jobs throughout the company.” Leonard stayed at Amgen through most of 2004, having been launched on what he calls Sharer’s general-management track and working in a “weird sort of array” of positions. “I got to start the business unit called Rheumatology now called Inflammation and do a lot of other startups and turn-arounds within the company,” Leonard said. He also once served as head of IT at Amgen, and also lead Engineering. Robin Campbell and Keith Leonard were part of a corps of high-level Amgen managers who, during the 1990s, so personified the company’s team-oriented operations that some of their legacies live on. Other names that remain legendary at Amgen include Kathy Wiltsey who, like Campbell helped invent the very business of biotech marketing, and Linda Lodge, all of whom still call the region home. They along with their expeditious CEOs were an elite class of industry pioneers who are responsible for building the world’s largest bio-pharmaceutical maker. While they have all left Amgen, and often travel globally (two were unable to be interviewed because they were in the Far East) they still make Thousand Oaks their home, most having become community leaders in the process. Amgen spinoffs After taking Amgen Europe from a $300 million operation to one that earned $1.5 billion at the time of his departure, Keith Leonard founded the world’s first biotech firm focused mainly on developing novel aesthetic therapies. While Leonard says there is little comparison to his last job at Amgen (senior president for European operations), being CEO of Calabasas-based Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, is a little reminiscent of the early days at Amgen, but on a much smaller scale. “Things weren’t always perfect at Amgen,” he says. “There was a lot of stress; things didn’t always go as planned, but the stress was good stress because you knew it was just growing pains.” Kythera is in various stages of development and testing of products, with working names such as “ATX-101” and “ATX-104,” the latter of which, if successful, will make today’s synthetic smile-line fillers look like Silly Putty. ATX-104 will be able to be “fine tuned” using special wavelengths of light. However, it is still in the early research stage. Kythera’s first product, a localized fat-deposit buster, which could have cosmetic and medical applications, is expected to be on the market in the next couple of years. Other biotech companies have sprouted up along the corridor since Amgen. Former Amgen executives have started some, like Kythera. But industry watchers are surprised that few, if any, small biotech companies in the area have been deliberately incubated or nurtured by Amgen. “For some reason with Amgen, their success has not caused many spin-offs,” said Joel Balbien, managing director of Greentech Consulting. Greentech advises CEOs in the private and public sectors about so-called clean-tech best practices and venture funding. “If it had been located in the Silicon Valley or San Diego, that might have been a little different,” Balbien said. He believes it is possible that Los Angeles’ entertainment-business culture, where studio heads jealously guard assets from outside corruption or theft, has affected other local industries including biotech. “But it’s more likely the product of decades of having scientists and executives brought up in the aerospace industry, which used to be number one in the region,” Balbien said. Aerospace once dominated the San Fernando Valley and adjacent regions, and it was an industry that was necessarily very secretive. Nevertheless, a somewhat smaller biotech zone has grown up around Amgen and Baxter Biopharma Solutions. Integrity Biosolution was formed in 2003 in Newbury Park. The Camarillo-based firm’s LyoTip technology has been licensed to Aridis Pharmaceuticals, and since 2006, the company has had Baxter as a partner. The two companies transfer technology and research among cooperative projects. Integrity’s LyoTip product is a cutting-edge stabilizer for vaccines. Also in 2003, a company called Stem Cell Biotherapy opened its doors in Agoura Hills. The firm’s tagline Future Medicine Today sounds as optimistic as its immediate goals are. Those goals include finding viable therapeutic options for entrenched and debilitating diseases such as autism, ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and Parkinson’s. Companies such as Westlake Village’s Trinity Therapeutics, which creates molecular technologies for treating immune-mediated neurological disorders dot the roads adjacent to Interstate 101 all the way up to Camarillo. There you’ll find ChemDepo, specializing in radiochemistry. In fact, unofficial spin-offs of Amgen go all the way into Ventura County and beyond. Dr. Robin Campbell, the former Amgen marketing head, is now CEO of Carpinteria-based Naryx Pharma Inc., which is reformulating existing drugs to better treat upper-respiratory diseases. “Without the anchors like Amgen and Baxter, that have been here for years, other life-science, bio-med, and biotech companies would not have formed along the corridor,” says Bruce Ackerman, CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. “They tend to compliment and not compete.” The region Ackerman says he is excited about The Biotech Forum and efforts to grow the region as an international life-sciences center. “We’re not just banging on the drum trying to get people to come here,” he said. “We’re already established and ready to really take off.” Those involved in the current push to further develop biotech along the 101 Corridor say with the recent announcement of Amgen’s first big layoff, which included cutting the jobs of 700 scientists, comes a great opportunity. “We see an incredibly unique opportunity for this region right now because you’ve got all these individuals coming out of Amgen who have all these years of experience and knowledge,” said Reinke. “It’s an amazing brain trust.” Following a model already proven by another group he helped found The Gold Coast Business Forum Reinke and friend John Dilts, created The Biotech Forum as a practical and an intellectual watering hole for nourishing commercial life-sciences entities along the 101 Corridor. In addition to being cofounder of The Biotech Forum, Dilts is president of the Los Angeles chapter of the investor network, Maverick Angels. Kythera’s Leonard is less inclined to grant that a true biotech corridor yet exists along the 101 today. There is some irony in that, given the fact that his definition of biotech is more inclusive than the definitions of some of his peers (learn more about defining biotech in a separate article in this special report). “I think the creation of a true corridor, like they have in San Francisco, would be advantageous to Kythera,” Leonard says. “We really can build a center of innovation like they have in the Bay Area; it would be great to have those companies surrounding us.” In addition to the biopharma firms already surrounding Kythera’s Calabasas offices, there are also device makers, such as Kinamed, located in Camarillo. Kinamed makes implantables and instruments with applications from joint-replacement to neurosurgery. Kinamed may not be a true biotech firm, but is certainly a life-sciences company. When looking at the bigger life-sciences picture, the 101 Corridor is a force to reckon with in terms of attracting the clean, knowledge-based employers political and business leaders covet these days. But there is one problem that will have to be tackled if the 101 Biotech (or Life Sciences) Corridor is to compete with Silicon Valley, or New England, where almost innumerable pharmaceutical and life-sciences firms are now headquartered. “Knowledge-based industries are, by definition, populated by people with advanced degrees,” Joel Balbien says. “Some regions are going to be attractive for their quality of life: less pollution, better schools, less traffic, less crime, better housing.” While northern Los Angeles County does well in most of those areas, there is a housing shortage in the area. “That was a problem Amgen found when it was growing,” Balbien said. “Leaders will have to come up with solutions to the housing shortage if they want those knowledge-based industries.” If the recent demise of a 5,000-home development proposed nearby is any indication of the public’s intolerance for finding a solution that includes more building, the Biotech Corridor’s future may have a wrinkle that refuses to be ironed out.

In business, we use budgets as our road map for successfully managing our organizations. Unfortunately, that’s not how bureaucrats see budgets. To them, a budget is one more tool to convince, coerce and cajole taxpayers to ante up again and again and again. Bureaucrats use budgets so that they can overspend and look for ways to scare taxpayers into paying more money for fewer services. The most successful scare tactic, and it works almost every time, is to suggest that a budget crunch will cause us to lay off the most important and valuable public employees: police officers, firefighters and teachers. No more taxes, they imply, will cause crime to run rampant in our streets, buildings ablaze to be ignored, and our children to be unable to read or write. In the City of Los Angeles we are fortunate; we have a Mayor who is intent on keeping his promise not to cut public safety. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has no truly effective leadership, is using this same old tactic of threatening to lay off teachers. They are using the media to blame the State for their own budget problems. They are yelling “foul” loud and clear in spite of the fact that their revenues are up and enrollment is down. They continue to find new ways to waste money in the name of “administration” and refuse to put resources into the classrooms, where it will do some good. If one of our so-called school district leaders were to tour the LAUSD headquarters building from top to bottom, this person would note employees shopping on the Internet, guarding the drinking fountain and coffee machines, and just sitting around talking all day long. Productivity, if it ever existed at the LAUSD, appears to be a thing of the past. If this leader brought a box of pink slips on this tour, and handed them out to these less-than-industrious people in their own headquarters, he/she would soon run out of pink slips and save enough money to be able to avoid laying off any teachers. The chance of that happening: nil at best. Look at the LAUSD’s record of spending hundreds of millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. They construct a school building on a toxic waste site and continue to throw good money after bad trying to resurrect a failed project. Their next fiasco was to overpay for a new headquarters… and then spend millions more to try to make it safe for the district’s highly-paid bureaucratic administrators. Successful developers try to acquire land at optimum locations for the best price. They then hire contractors with the best of reputations and qualification to erect a building based on a well-thoughtout set of plans. They then pay for this with long term financing at the most competitive rates. The LAUSD does just the opposite. They overpay for property; work with the same inept contractors who underbid a job to get it and then profit handsomely on “change orders;” and have no financial strategy in place in advance. There is no reason for the LAUSD to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for buildings that will be outdated in 30 years. These properties could be built to the specifications of the school district and then leased to them for 30 years at a fixed rental rate. This immediate cash savings could be used for smaller classrooms, better school books, and higher wages for the teachers. Remember, these are the people who are teaching our next generation of skilled workers. This is a simple solution to a major problem. The newest, and possibly the best, example of waste is the LAUSD’s spectacle of creating a new payroll system. Their ill-conceived idea to reinvent the wheel cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and still cannot pay its teachers their proper salaries. Who hired these payroll system-creating people? Who looked at their backgrounds and experience? Who is responsible for this newest humiliation? And best of all: they re-hired the same accounting firm to fix the problems they caused at millions of dollars more! School districts and municipalities across the nation have working payroll systems. Couldn’t a system that works in New York City, Boston or Philadelphia work for our school district? Why not just pay them a fee to duplicate their existing system? Has anyone ever heard of a major corporation creating a payroll system that does not work? Additionally, there are many large corporations with more employees than LAUSD who use thirdparty vendors for their payroll, at a fraction of the cost. Why does the Los Angeles Unified School District need to be in the construction business, the real estate business and the computer software business? Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought they were in the education business. Rickey M. Gelb is managing general partner of Gelb Enterprises, a real estate development and propertymanagement company.

Okay, say you’re a scientist with this great new idea that will change the world. Perhaps it’s a treatment for a deadly disease or a new way to test for medical conditions. The complicated research is finished; the hours and hours in a lab have paid off. Well, then what? Then follows is what any inventor faces turning the idea into a product that in turn finds success in the marketplace and brings in a profit. In the biotech industry it can take years for the process to travel a path of licensing deals; building a team for the commercialization; finding investors with both patience and deep pockets; choosing a corporate partner; taking the technology from a lab setting to mass production; and maybe even devising an exit strategy. That lengthy development time has both its advantages and disadvantages. “Once you are ahead it can be difficult to catch you,” said Richard Hamilton, president and CEO of energy crop developer Ceres Inc. in Thousand Oaks. Unique perhaps to biotech is the origins of new research. Rarely have ideas for new drugs or treatments come from self-funded startups. More likely the ideas spring from university labs, or from research paid for by the government conducted by not for profits or small labs. Taking those ideas to the marketplace begins with the licensing agreement. There are two routes to follow the quick one is for, say, a university to go to an established pharmaceutical company and get a lot of money in return. Setting up that licensing deal with a small start up opens up a whole other set of decisions that an experienced law firm needs to get involved. For instance, how will the license be structured and the intellectual property defined. From the start up’s perspective the broader the license the better; while the university wants to narrow down the uses of its research. “If they screw that up the company can be dead on arrival,” said Joel Balbien, the managing partner with a Calabasas consulting firm. After a licensing deal is finalized is typically when a start up contacts a company like Designed Polymers Inc. of Newbury Park for testing of the material, a protein for example, they now possess. Outsourcing the tests can save on time and money as building and staffing an on-site laboratory is expensive. The test results are needed later when applying to regulatory agencies for permission to test on humans or sell to the public, said Greg Cauchon, a former Amgen scientist who founded Designed Polymers three years ago. “Once they (a start up) license a product what they are typically aiming at is to get to the point as quickly as possible to license out their drug to a large pharmaceutical company,” Cauchon said. Next up is having the right mix of academics and business experience. The right management That’s where the right management team comes in. With scientists lacking that experience, it is important to have management in place with a proven track record in taking products into the marketplace. For one thing, investors may disappear without that experience. “They will not invest in a company led by someone with a pure academic background,” Balbien said. Responding to the absence of scientists with business skills, California State University Channel Islands in 2007 started a dual degree program of biology and an MBA. The program is among a small number in the nation and the only one on the West Coast, said Ching Hua Wang, chair of the biology and nursing programs and director of the master’s biotech program at the Camarillo school. The program draws from senior scientists, managers and attorneys practicing within the biotech industry. “They bring fresh perspectives into the classroom,” Wang said. The business expertise in the management team at Kreido Biofuels eased that company’s transition from concept to commercialization. CEO Ben Binninger easily rattles off the career histories of those working for him charged with operations, finances and technology. “All of us have been involved with start ups to world class companies,” Binninger said. Kreido, based in Camarillo, developed an innovative processing system with applications in multiple industries, among them alternative fuels and pharmaceuticals. Kreido will first apply its system to biodiesel production, a use that wasn’t considered when the company was founded more than a decade ago. Holding up placing a modular facility in Wilmington, N.C. to begin making fuel is money. “The plant is built and the site ready to go yet we still have to raise $20 million to finish it out,” Binninger said. Ah, yes, the funding. Raising capital takes an additional set of skills that a scientist may not have, showing once again the importance of having the right team in place for the commercialization stage. Hitting certain milestones in product development can make a start up attractive to a corporate partner who can provide additional funding. But it is important that the start up not give away the store to its larger partner. “It is a balancing act requiring sophistication,” Balbien said.