What do ya know? The competition for a choice, 26-acre parcel in Chatsworth is turning out to be a local race after all. Brokers representing the Los Angeles Times, which announced late last year that it was closing its Chatsworth plant and selling the property, have issued invitations to a select group of developers and are currently reviewing the bids submitted. The list of companies believed to be bidding for the site reads like a who’s who of local development, representing some of the largest projects in the greater San Fernando Valley. They are believed to include LNR Property Corp., M.W. Ossola and Associates Inc., Overton Moore Properties, Sheridan Ebbert Real Estate Development and Voit Development Co. Although they are not all based here, they have all done extensive work in the area. Executives at the development companies either could not be reached or did not return phone calls. Likewise, Onno Zwaneveld, senior vice president at Trammell Crow, which is conducting the search, declined to name the developers under consideration. “We’re a couple of weeks away,” Zwaneveld said. “No one has been selected.” Trammell Crow did not go out with a public request for proposals, but rather hand-picked the companies invited, sources said. Each has a long history of development projects and most have worked in all phases of development – industrial, office, residential and retail. LNR most recently developed LNR Warner Center, a campus office park in Woodland Hills. Ossola is currently developing a light industrial park and a shopping center in Moorpark. Overton Moore is currently developing Northridge Business Center, a 16-building industrial project. Sheridan Ebbert has current projects in Valencia and Torrance. Voit, which just completed the Burbank Airport Commerce Center, is now working on an addition to The Plant, another industrial site in Panorama City. Other developers may also be involved, some sources said. The project is highly coveted because it is so large and it comes along at a time when there are virtually no large developable parcels on the Valley floor. For that reason, initial speculation was that developers from across the country would throw their hats into the ring. Industrial Sale A 129,000-square foot industrial property in Sun Valley has sold for $13,760,000. The property, at 7606-7660 Clybourn Ave. and 7605 and 7616 Wheatland Ave. and 7616 Clybourn Ave. and 7605-7616 Wheatland Ave., sits on 5.5 acres of land. The buyers, a private investment group, plan to redevelop the property for industrial condominiums. Eli Anishban, principal with Precision Properties in Encino, represented both the buyer and the seller, also a private investor. Westlake Groundbreaking Steadfast Companies and Amstar Group last week broke ground on Westlake Park Place, a 461,000-square-foot office park in Westlake Village. The first phase of the project will encompass five buildings on Townsgate Road ranging in size from 5,550 square-feet to 102,012 square feet. That phase is expected to be completed by Fall, 2007. Steadfast and Amstar believe the best projects serve all types of businesses large operations looking for contiguous blocks of space as well as smaller, entrepreneurial operations seeking an ideal location and amenities,” said Bob Searles, president of Steadfast. “Our project is designed to be highly flexible and to accommodate the widest range of office customers.” The groundbreaking took place on Aug. 24. Moorpark Project Gets Underway Oltmans Construction Co. has begun construction on a 132,500-square-foot corporate headquarters and distribution facility for Warehouse Discount Center in Moorpark. The build-to-suit, at 14339 White Sage Road, will replace the company’s current headquarters office in Agoura Hills and a builder division in Camarillo. The facility will include an additional retail showroom for the company’s home appliance and plumbing fixtures. That retail location will join the Agoura Hills retail outpost, which will remain open, along with other retail operations in Camarillo, Canyon Country, Northridge, Oxnard and Santa Barbara. The project is expected to be completed in March. WDC has more than 180 employees. Burbank Acquisition A 10,000-square foot office building in Burbank was purchased by an owner-user for $3.1 million. The property, at 401-405 Riverside Drive, was acquired by Smart Post Sound, a production company. The buyer was represented by Alexander Wadley, a broker with Lee & Associates-L.A. North/Ventura. The seller, a family trust, was represented by Andrew Berk and Mark Evanoff of Ramsey-Shilling Commercial Real Estate Services. Multifamily Sale A 15-unit apartment building in Glendale has sold for $1.82 million. The building, at 511 S. Verdugo Road, was built in 1962. It is fully occupied. Chuck Dunn, director at Charles Dunn Co.’s downtown offices, represented the buyer, a private investor. Kirk Kabaklian of Kabaklian Realty represented the seller, also a private investor. Senior reporter Shelly Garcia can be reached at (818) 316-3123 or by e-mail at [email protected].

The Hilton Burbank Airport & Convention Center hotel has been sold for $125 million. Pyramid Hotel Opportunity Venture II LLC of Boston will pay about $256,000 per room for the 488-room property. The seller was Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., a Chicago real estate investment trust with 19 properties and more than 9,000 rooms across the country. The hotel was projected to contribute $10.1 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for 2006, the company said. The deal is expected to close in September. The hotel, at 2500 Hollywood Way, also includes 50,000 square feet of meeting space and the Daily Grill restaurant. The facility was built in 1980 and has around 300 employees. Strategic reported that for the first six months of this year, occupancy at the hotel was 75.4 percent, a .7 percent increase from the same 2005 period. The rate was slightly below the Valley average of 78.49 percent during that same time, according to the hotel trends tracking firm PKF Consulting. Total revenue for the hotel tallied $15.6 million, up 11.4 percent from the previous year, the company reported in its second quarter earnings report released Aug. 2.

SAN FERNANDO VALLEY Burbank Joe: Burbank-ites can choose from yet another coffee house option with the opening of Romancing the Bean in Burbank Village. The 20,000-square-foot shop, adjacent to Gordon Biersch, sports a European-style d & #233;cor and will in the future, host live bands and an open mic night. Owner Kerry Krull has also developed a menu of gourmet salads, sandwiches, deserts and light breakfast entrees to go along with the organic coffees and teas and coffee drinks. Glendale Healthy: Officials and hospital staffers broke ground Aug. 17 on a new Ambulatory Surgery Center at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Glendale. The 15,500-square-foot facility, at Chevy Chase Drive and Sinclair Avenue, will house four surgical operating rooms, a procedure room and recovery room. It will specialize in outpatient surgical procedures in which patients will be able to return home within a few hours of being treated. Construction is scheduled to finish by next October. Reseda Wizard: The post office at 7320 Reseda Blvd. in Reseda will be renamed after the celebrated UCLA basketball coach John R. Wooden. President George W. Bush on Aug. 17 signed legislation to officially name the Reseda facility the Coach John Wooden Post Office Building. Wooden, 95, is a 30-year Encino resident, although the Encino post office at 5805 White Oak Ave. was named after Los Angeles Lakers sportscaster “Chick” Hearn in 2002. The Reseda facility was the next closest, near where Wooden’s daughter, Nancy Muehlhausen, lives. Before retiring in 1975, Wooden coached to UCLA Bruins to 10 nation titles, seven consecutively. The official ceremony will take place Oct. 14, Wooden’s 96th birthday. ANTELOPE VALLEY Palmdale Grant: The Palmdale Regional Airport received a $900,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation Small Community Air Service Development Program. The grant supports a revenue guarantee program for regional jet service on a network carrier from the Palmdale airport. Local governmental agencies contributed $3.7 million for the program. The program seeks to attract regional jet service from Palmdale to a connecting hub market such as Phoenix, San Francisco, or Dallas/Ft. Worth. Los Angeles World Airports, owner and operator of the Palmdale airfield, has been in discussions with several network carriers expressing interest in re-introducing service to Palmdale. SANTA CLARITA VALLEY Valencia Bond: Voters in November will be asked to approve a $160 million bond measure to fund an expansion of the Valencia campus of College of the Canyons. The money would pay for technology upgrades, safety improvements and new classrooms, labs and other facilities. It would also make available an additional $70 million from the state. The 36-year-old community college has faced a space crunch in recent years as more students enroll. This spring, the student population topped 18,000.

This is the second of two parts. The first part can be read here . In the last issue of the Business Journal I confessed my personal worries that the value of my home equity could well vaporize by the time the dust settles on the Southern California real estate market in the next couple of years. Now, if someone had told me to get out of tech stocks and go cash in January of 2000, just think how much farther ahead I’d be today. So at present I have an unexpected real estate windfall in my home, with the writing on the wall everywhere I turn seeming to be about the coming burst of the “housing bubble”. Any wonder why I feel like a deer in the headlights all over again? So what if you could actually “lock in” the value of your equity in either an up or down real estate market? And what if, in the process of preserving or otherwise diversifying your home equity values, you still own the home as an asset, plus additional diversified assets newly created when you “cashed out” those diminishing home equity values to salvage them while you still can. Tempting, but there would have to be a down side, wouldn’t there? Building diversified wealth You see, the name of the game is actually number of assets you own and the growth of those multiple assets, not the equity you’ve built up in one single asset. (Which for most working people is namely their home and only their home). I don’t have to tell you savvy real estate investors that rather than owning one home with $500,000 of equity in it, I would rather own 10 homes with $50,000 of equity each. as long as real estate values are increasing. But just as such extreme leveraging can build great wealth in an appreciating market, just think of the crash you’d hear if 10 mortgaged homes took a slide in price in the coming years. One answer: It’s time to diversify! About a year ago Carrol Lloyd in the San Francisco Chronicle started sounding warning signals that Robert Kiyosaki himself, the financial guru who has spurred so many working people to become big-time leveraged real estate investors, has privately become “a major bubble blower”. She points out ” he’s begun posting articles that caution against what might be called ‘sur-real estate exuberance.’ He confesses that he’s currently dumping real estate that produces no cash flow” (from rental income). Holy Cow! My guess is that he’s diversifying. Shoving all your personal worth into the equity in your home creates several problems: 1.) Less Safety: All your eggs are in one basket. If this housing market does decline, it’s not your debt that will decrease it’s all the extra principal payments you’ve made into the mortgage toward an early pay-off that will vanish overnight! Plus, do you know that the first foreclosure targets in a down market are those mortgages that have been mostly paid down? That’s because the bank knows they can sell that home for a discount and still recapture their loan. If the home was 100 percent mortgaged and the market declines, the bank doesn’t want the home, they want to keep you in the loan and they’ll bargain! 2.) Less Liquidity: Scenario 1: The greatest common denominators in home mortgage foreclosure are twofold: Loss of income or personal disability. At those times when you may most need to tap into the equity in your house, borrowing will be either very costly (when the lender discovers your circumstances) or impossible. Scenario 2: In 1999 I was forced to sell a house in Orange I had owned for 9 years at a $30,000 loss. I was renting the home out, and when expenses came up I couldn’t afford due to poor current cash flow, with no liquidity I was forced to sell in a down market. Adequate liquidity (money OUT of the house to draw upon) allows you to wait out down markets if you want to sell. 3.) Zero Rate of Return: Again, it’s not the equity that makes your home values increase, it’s the perceived desirability of the asset on the market, multiplied by the number of assets you own. Do you seriously think Donald Trump waited to pay off his loan on Trump Towers, before he started his next project? He wants multiple appreciating assets, baby equity be damned! The fact is that by proper established techniques of home equity optimization the average American family could greatly increase the safety and liquidity of their nest egg while immediately doubling their asset base and thereby often realizing an extra $500,000 of newly found eventual retirement income, without having to devote one dime more toward retirement than they save today! For example, in the simplest form, let’s say that you have $300,000 of equity in a $600,000 home. If you separated this equity from the home into a cash position, even earning only a net 6% ($18,000), and your home value goes down $200,000 in value, did you really lose the money? No, it’s still intact, plus it’s earning. But if your home value goes up by 5%, was there any disadvantage? No. Now your home went up $30,000 and your cash account went up $18,000. In fact, you’ll find that if your goal is to pay your mortgage off sooner, then this side fund technique will get you there faster than surrendering extra principal payments to the mortgage company (which I purport you never want to do) plus you keep control of your equity in the event of unemployment or disability, when borrowing it back will be either very expensive or impossible. WARNING: Don’t do this without adult supervision, folks! The trick is that you must be fairly certain that the separated equity will earn at a rate higher than the cost of the mortgage. A good financial planner can accomplish this in ways you would not intuitively implement on your own by utilizing two key tools; Capturing the spreads between the simple interest mortgage and the compounding interest in the cash account; and the tax-deductible mortgage interest vs. tax-free interest earnings required as part of the cash account you set up. We have implemented dozens of equity optimization models like this, and their outcomes can vary considerably based on age, current cash flow needs, and even what type of mortgage options are available to you. Two good sources of reference material you can study further on this are the DVD “Why You Should Carry a Big Long Mortgage and Never Pay It Off” by Ric Edelman (ricedelman.com/store/video_mortgage.asp) and the book “Missed Fortune 101” by Douglas Andrew (available at Amazon.com). Bruce M. Weide is the author of “Getting Rid of Taxes in Business and Retirement” and President of TAX-FREE Benefit Specialists & Insurance Services, a firm in the San Fernando Valley dedicated to bringing Fortune 500 tax and retirement savings strategies to small and mid-size businesses. He can be reached at [email protected] or by calling 818-896-5958.

Scott Barnett, president and CEO of Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., is optimistic that his new “Forrest Gump”-themed restaurant at CityWalk will fare better than Gladstone’s, a branch of the popular Malibu seafood eatery that occupied the space until it shut down last year. “I have a high degree of confidence,” Barnett said. “But I’m still cautious. I’m really cautious about every site.” Barnett said the new Bubba Gump, which opened Aug. 26, is a familiar brand in an attractive spot with lots of foot traffic and a mix of locals and tourists. The 22-eatery chain started in 1996 as a partnership between Paramount Pictures, which released “Forrest Gump,” and Monterey, Calif.-based Rusty Pelican Restaurants has had success at similar tourist-friendly destinations including Santa Monica Pier, Mall of America and Times Square. Barnett said CityWalk fits into the scheme. “I can’t think of a better location. It makes a tremendous amount of sense,” he said. “We’ve been working with Universal for years for this site.” The 10,500-square-foot storefront is CityWalk’s largest and for nine years was home to Gladstone’s since that portion of the outdoor entertainment center opened in 1998. The restaurant was a franchise licensed by Gladstone’s corporate owners, California Beach Restaurants Inc., to Universal, which ran the day-to-day operations. The 760-seat restaurant with its faux nautical equipment and patio reminiscent of the Malibu original lasted until 2005. Eliot Sekuler, a spokesman for NBC Universal, which owns CityWalk, said the company does not comment about tenant issues and would not discuss why Gladstone’s left. “We wouldn’t comment on Gladstone’s departure other than to note that Gladstone’s had a very successful run,” Sekuler said. However, Barnett said that he was told that Gladstone’s was doing “very substantial sales” when it was closed by Universal last year in favor of Bubba Gump. He said it may have been a case of Universal wanting to swap one tenant for a higher-performing one. “Universal probably wanted a concept in there that could get better revenue and where they could get rent from,” Barnett said. Unlike the Gladstone’s arrangement, Bubba Gump will own the restaurant and lease the space from Universal, Barnett said. Movie history Universal officials would also not talk about Bubba Gump, but in a written statement, Universal Studios Hollywood President and Chief Operating Officer Larry Kurzweil, said the restaurant fits well into CityWalk’s theme. Bubba Gump “gives us a partnership with a brand that has been highly successful in many other locations, including such other ‘entertainment epicenters’ as New York’s Times Square, where it’s a proven popular dining choice for both local and out-of-town visitors,” he said. “As a bonus, the restaurant has a fun, upbeat connection to movie history, which is at the core of our brand position.” The new Bubba Gump arrives as Universal moves into the last segment of the competitive summer season. The park does not release ticket figures, but in 2005 the now-defunct magazine “Amusement Business” estimated that attendance at the park dropped 6 percent from a year prior, or almost 4.7 million people. In response, Universal has mounted an aggressive television, radio and print advertising campaign to drum up new business and has slashed ticket prices. CityWalk, which is physically separate from the park but feels the impact of lower attendance, has also added more promotional events. Varied reactions The push has netted some results, but business is still down from several years ago, according to some CityWalk tenants. “They’re not doing as well as when we first opened,” said Jody Maroni, who opened a branch of his Venice gourmet hotdog stand Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom at CityWalk several years ago. In the early years, tourists lined up down the street. These days, business is much steadier, said Maroni, who turned the stand into a franchise a few years ago. “It went from unbelievable to really good,” he said. He credited the lost business to the general slowdown after 9/11 and fewer international tourists. Attention is also being drawn away by new projects, such as The Grove in Hollywood, Maroni said. “It’s still a great place to do business. But it’s certainly not The Grove,” he said. Same is true over at Daily Grill, one of 21 American-fare restaurants West L.A.-based owner Grill Concepts has across the country. Vice President of Operations Louie Feinstein said revenues have improved this season after a series of lean years. “We’ve had a very good summer. Sales are up,” he said. “That’s what we look for.” CityWalk seems to be steadily drawing more crowds, he said. “It’s come back. CityWalk has had its ups and downs,” he said. One sign that business is holding steady is the addition of new tenants, such as the Bubba Gump restaurant a few yards away from Daily Grill. That could mean more competition, but Feinstein thinks any new attention benefits the existing stores. “It’s a well-known brand that will bring people up to the Walk. Getting more there is great for us,” he said.

A training facility in North Hollywood for manufacturing workers closed its doors this month to make way for the proposed Valley Plaza retail project. The National Tooling and Machining Association facility on Victory Boulevard near Laurel Canyon Boulevard falls into a city of Los Angeles redevelopment district now owned by developer J.H. Snyder Co. The training center ended its last class in mid-August and the association is deciding what to do with its equipment, said Dan Watts, a trustee with NTMA Training Centers of Southern California. The NTMA, however, plans to continue training in the Valley by providing instructors and course material for in-house training at several Valley manufacturers while also negotiating with the North Valley Occupational Center to provide computer-aided manufacturing training, Watts said. Besides being in the way of the Valley Plaza project, the facility’s closure involved other factors, namely not having enough students to keep it going and a decrease in state funding for training. “We were concerned about what to do out there,” Watts said. “We weren’t getting enough entry level students to make it viable. And you can’t keep it open with the retraining students.” The closure reduced the number of NTMA training centers to two from four it had four years ago. A center in Costa Mesa closed about 18 months ago because it couldn’t attract manufacturing students in an area populated with high-tech industry. The manufacturing industry as a whole faces difficulties in attracting a qualified workforce. NTMA Chairman Mike Mittler places the reason on loss of manufacturing jobs and a false perception there is no place for people to go in the industry. “There is still great opportunity but however we still need to attract those people to come into our industry,” Mittler said. Mark Wilkinson, of Prompt Machine Products in Chatsworth, said that while the center’s closing may not have a big effect it does cut off an avenue of education in the manufacturing field. The industry as a whole falls short in educating potential manufacturing workers, said Wilkinson, president of the NTMA chapter in the Valley. “It’s not just everybody else’s fault we’re not getting employees,” Wilkinson said. “It’s the fault of our industry. We don’t get involved enough with what we need.” The association opened the training facility in a 10,000-square foot space about four years ago. Its students were of two types: new hires receiving 16 weeks of instruction funded through the California State Employment Training Panel, and workers upgrading their skills in a 12-week session. To get the state funding, the responsibility to find jobs for the new hires fell to the association. But the state’s contribution to the new hire training was cut several years ago, leading the center to accept students paying with loans, grants and scholarships. The new hire program for the paying students, however, wasn’t all that successful, Watts said, because of a lack of involvement by employers. “It was a little hard getting the support from the community out there,” Watts said. The last classes for paying students ended about three months ago. As the association clears out of the North Hollywood space, the equipment there may end up at NTMA training centers in Norwalk and Ontario.

Alan Comins has helped to build two companies to $14 million in sales and more, but today the former CPA is sitting in the warehouse of his not-quite-two-year-old company projecting about $1 million in revenues by the time the year is out. Comins decided to start over after his and his former partners’ goals began to diverge, making his new company, Premier Carpet, a newcomer even if Comins is not. This time, he has chosen his partners more carefully. “He’s really good on the phone. I’m real strong at blueprint estimating,” said Joe Nye, the other partner of Canoga Park-based Premier Carpet. “Then I hand it off to Alan and he puts it together and puts the pricing to it.” Premier Carpet provides mostly commercial flooring through general contractors, architects and direct to corporate accounts. A small portion of the business also provides flooring directly to homeowners, usually of the luxury variety. Since opening in 2005, the business is due to grow more than two-fold this year, thanks largely to the partners’ former contacts and their focus on pleasing their customers. “We use them because we don’t have to worry about things being redone or anything changing from the point of signing a contract,” said Peter Anastassiou, general manager at Broadway Real Estate, which owns and manages a number of properties including Aon Center, a 62-story high rise in downtown L.A. that Premier recently carpeted. “It’s an industry where service is not the highest quality. So when you find someone that’s willing to be responsive, get you bids in a timely manner, have the bids be accurate and priced right and then follow through and get the job done, you use them.” Comins a CPA by training, started out as CFO of a Glendale flooring company that grew from about $8 million to $20 million in sales before it was sold to a large mill. Troubled partnership After the sale in 2000, he joined up with two other partners to acquire another flooring company, Carpetland. But after about four years, the partners began to disagree. “My goal as a CPA is to find a deal and maybe sell the company. When we realized we weren’t seeing eye-to-eye we didn’t have a sale anymore. We decided it was best to disband what was left and move on,” Comins said. Carpetland had seen revenues grow considerably under Comins and his former partners, expanding to about $14 million in sales from about $5 million when they bought the company. “I was competing with them, and they would either have the contract or be competing against us all the time,” said Nye, who decided to throw in the towel and join up with his Carpetland rivals several years ago. When the owners decided to close Carpetland and go their separate ways, Nye joined up with Comins. “I’ve never found anyone who has the same goals I have, and I never found anyone I could trust,” said Nye, who had worked alone until joining Carpetland. “When I was working at Carpetland, Alan was the only one I liked.” Wary of partnerships, the two worked out a somewhat tentative arrangement, structuring the company to be certain they will avoid any serious financial consequences if they decide to part ways. The two set up a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Canoga Park where they store sample books, remnants and other materials. And they have invested in a computer system that automates the process of estimating and bidding, making the company both fast and accurate when vying for jobs. Client history Meanwhile, both of the partners have been able to bring past business clients into the company. “I don’t use anyone but him,” said Thad Smith, vice president at KV Mart Co., owners of 22 supermarkets under the names Top Valu Markets, Valu Mart and Valu Plus, who has worked with Nye for years. “He’s a very conscientious person and he looks to make sure the customer is satisfied. If you’re working under a deadline, like a grand opening, he’ll get it done for us. He doesn’t come up with excuses.” The company has picked up jobs at Cedars Sinai, where it has installed flooring for some of the medical suites; Nike’s regional offices in Culver City; Santa Monica Audi and a number of Wells Fargo bank branches, among others. Still, Premier has to compete with a handful of much larger players, and Comins has had to develop a business development strategy using less traditional avenues. Instead of attending meetings of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), where many of Premier’s competitors get sales leads, Comins prospects business groups like CPA associations and venture capital organizations. “He’s a social butterfly,” said Nye of his partner. The young company still works with general contractors, but Comins hopes to establish more relationships directly with corporations. “There’s probably about five competitors that are in the $15 million to $30 million sales range,” Comins said. “But there’s plenty of work out there for everybody and it’s all about who you know and how good you are at responding to the clientele.” Premier Carpet Year Founded: 2005 Revenues in 2005: $300,000 Revenues in 2006 (projected): $1 million plus Employees in 2005: 4 Employees in 2006: 8 Driving Force: Companies of all kinds are continually expanding or remodeling.

Bankruptcy filings fell to a five year low after a federal law made it tougher to seek protection. Read the story on Bloomberg.

These are the lazy days of late summer. A lot of businesspeople are on vacation. The freeway commute is as nice as it gets all year. Fewer phone calls, so it seems, as things take a break right before everything revs up again after Labor Day. A way to catch our breath a little during a very hot Valley summer. Seems like there’s sort of a lull except in the restaurant robberies that are terrorizing restaurant workers and patrons across the Valley. There has been a rash of robberies hitting mostly non-chain local eateries in the Valley such as the Valley Inn, Barone’s and most recently Ca’ Del Sol. Robbers wearing ski masks charge into the restaurants near closing time, rob the patrons and the restaurant and bar then leave. The robberies kicked into high gear in March after a lull of several months. This summer, they have been of increasing frequency, scaring the daylights out of everybody. Recently, I’ve found that the robberies are on a lot of readers’ minds. Some are asking why we haven’t written anything about these incidents that are affecting local businesses. Here’s the reason: I haven’t felt that we could add anything constructive. The daily newspapers and broadcast media have been reporting on the robberies when they happen. They’ve also reported what police are doing about the situation and the various initiatives by chambers of commerce and other organizations to help the restaurants. Except for reporting on our daily updated Web site, our status as a bi-weekly newspaper leaves us as looking very stale if we simply reported the incidents in our print edition many days after the robberies happen. That leaves us with other options such as in-depth reporting or analysis of the situation. But this is where it gets difficult. We don’t want to reveal what precautions the restaurants are taking to thwart the robbers. And we also don’t want to give the robbers any ideas of what restaurants to hit by quoting some restaurant owners who have not been hit yet but may fit the mold of eateries that the robbers like to invade. We at the Business Journal would certainly hate to be responsible for someone getting hurt. So being terribly creative with in-depth analysis of the situation could be risky. But I’m writing this column because the business community and restaurant patrons need to be aware of what’s going on out there. Not to stop eating out but to just be smart and prepared. As patrons of our neighborhood restaurants, we need to watch their backs. Report anything that might help police about suspicious activities near restaurants. The police suggest that restaurant owners themselves need to do some basic things like hiring security guards and locking doors as closing time nears. One of the theories of why such restaurants are being targeted and banks less so is because banks have put in more sophisticated security systems over the years. Local restaurants haven’t. So better security seems to be the key. I’m confident the police will catch these guys. It’s a big Valley. They can’t be everywhere at all times. But the LAPD is as sophisticated as they come. They’ve undertaken an organized informational campaign for the business community to make them aware of what they can do to help thwart these robberies. Let’s try to cooperate. As a newspaper and a voice for the Valley business community, we will publish articles about the robberies when we feel we have something constructive to contribute. Business Journal Editor Jason Schaff can be reached at (818) 316-3125 or at [email protected]

The sporting goods chain Sport Chalet Inc. has been ranked as the most desired retailer in the 2006 Retail Demand Today Report issued by Kanbay Research Institute. The firm, based in Virginia, looked at 104 retailers in 16 retail categories and conducted more than 6,600 web interviews with consumers. La Ca & #324;ada-based Sport Chalet was ranked No. 1 by consumers and received the top retailer in sporting goods, according to the study. Founded in 1959, Sport Chalet has more than 40 stores in the southwest.