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For 28 years, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal has represented and covered the Valley-area business community like no other media source. I’m excited to announce that the publication format will change from a biweekly newspaper to a bimonthly magazine. The new magazine, branded as Inside the Valley, will be distributed to subscribers starting in March.
Two years ago, we merged operations of the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles Business Journals to provide more consistent news coverage throughout Greater Los Angeles. The concept was simple: two publications, one editorial voice. The results have been impressive. In 2023, both the Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley Business Journals received top honors as best regional large tabloid and best regional small tabloid in the country, respectively, by the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
This new magazine product, dedicated to the Valley’s Community of Business™, is an important component of our long-term strategy and is overdue. The format change allows our editorial team to increase its time-sensitive Valley coverage within the pages of the weekly edition of the Los Angeles Business Journal. At the same time, it allows us to dive deeper into the people, companies and industries leading the Valley area in the pages of the magazine.
Inside the Valley will don the Los Angeles Business Journal masthead and will continue to cover important business developments, economic trends and newsmakers, but in a way that will have greater longevity. The Business Journal will continue to expand local Valley business events including panel discussions, networking receptions honoring Valley leaders, and recognition programs from the commercial real estate awards to our women’s leadership symposium and our diversity, equity and inclusion program.
“I see tremendous opportunity in the upcoming changes to the way we approach our coverage of the Valley,” said Hannah Welk, the newly announced interim editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal. “Inside the Valley will allow the Business Journal to showcase the companies and leaders who have made the Valley thrive with longer pieces, engrossing stories and a unique design.
“Furthermore, the inclusion of Valley-based companies in the Los Angeles Business Journal on a weekly basis will give these companies greater visibility and allow us more possibilities to spotlight these organizations,” she said.
Longstanding must-reads (which are already in magazine format), The Valley 200 and The Lists, will continue to publish and will be incorporated into the new magazines. The Lists will be unveiled in digital format each week, with many of them also appearing within the print edition as well. Our digital content covering the Valley will continue with three newsletters per week focusing on business news, the community and The Lists.
The ways in which readers consume content is constantly evolving. We’re committed to providing award-winning content in all of the ways our readers choose to absorb it: in newspaper print, in various digital formats, in person through face-to-face events, and now, in magazine print. Regional business magazines are among the fastest-growing media platforms throughout the country, offering a unique reader experience. Adding this to our array of products expands our media footprint and only increases engagement with our readers. If you are a San Fernando Valley Business Journal subscriber, you don’t have to do anything. You will automatically become a subscriber of the new magazine.
While the look and name may be changing, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal spirit is engrained in its pages and shares its goal of continuing to serve the Valley business community in new and evolving ways.
Best regards,
Josh Schimmels
Publisher & CEO
The Business Journal’s editor-in-chief, Charles Crumpley, has left the news operation after 18 years with the organization.
Hannah Welk, who has been a managing editor, has been promoted to interim editor.
“It has been an honor and a true pleasure to work here,” Crumpley said. “Journalism allows you to collaborate with talented, creative people under a ticking clock to accomplish your goal, and that is exhilarating. Time kept zooming by. Have I really been here all these years?”
Crumpley said he does not plan to retire but will take some time to explore his next step. The change is in effect: Crumpley’s last day was Friday; Welk became editor on Monday.
“I feel really good about this change,” Crumpley said. “The team is strong. Hannah has been managing editor more than a year and is a natural leader. I know she will excel in her new post.”
Josh Schimmels, the Business Journal’s publisher and chief executive, shares, “I’ve had the honor of working with Charlie in various capacities since 2010. His professionalism and dedication to the art of the story is unparalleled. Like the true leader he is, he’s positioned the editorial team to succeed for years to come. He’s been invaluable the past two years while we merged our two papers’ operations. To best use Charlie’s own terms, I give him a ‘tip of the hat’ and congratulate him for all that he’s done throughout our industry.”
Crumpley began his career as a reporter and eventually became a senior writer for the Kansas City Star, where he won several national honors including an Overall First Place Award, a kind of grand prize, from the National Press Club in 1987. He was the second reporter in the country to be embedded with the FDIC as it planned and executed the closing of an insolvent bank. Also, in 1990-91 he was a Fulbright scholar to Japan, and for years afterward Fulbright appointed him to selection committees, and he chaired several, to choose the next generation of foreign scholars.
Crumpley went on to be the business news editor at two metro daily newspapers, also working as a local television news commentator at one. He left his last post as business editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune in late 2005 to be the editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal.
In his first stint as editor, which lasted 10 years, the Business Journal won the Best Newspaper award for large tabloids six times from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers, the main organization of business journals and other local and state-based business news publications. A different journalism organization, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, once gave the Business Journal an award called the Best of the Best, a kind of grand prize.
In early 2016 Crumpley became editor and publisher of the sister publication, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. It routinely won the Best Newspaper award for small tabloids from the alliance of business news publishers. Crumpley also won two awards for local civic leadership including a Star of the Valley honor in 2021 from the Valley Economic Alliance, presented by then-mayor Eric Garcetti.
When the two newspapers combined operations in March 2022, Crumpley became editor-in-chief of both publications to see the editorial staff through the transition. Last year, the Los Angeles Business Journal won the Best Newspaper award for large tabloids from the alliance while the San Fernando Valley Business Journal won for small tabloids.
“Charlie has been an amazing editor and mentor to me and to countless other journalists over the years,” Welk said. “We are sad to see him leave but will continue to build upon the foundation he has created for the Business Journal as a must-read publication for L.A.’s business community.”
Welk is a USC alum. After graduating, she became a business reporter at the Orange County Register. Welk has freelanced for various publications including The Real Deal and Crain’s before joining the Business Journal in 2018 as a real estate reporter. She was promoted to managing editor in 2022.
“I am incredibly excited for the opportunity to lead the Business Journal,” she said. “For more than 40 years, the Business Journal has served the community, telling stories of the people and companies that make up L.A. I’m thrilled to continue to build upon the publication’s impressive legacy.”
The San Fernando Valley’s office vacancy rate was 21.1% in the fourth quarter, up from 20.6% in the previous quarter. No new office was under construction and the market experienced a net absorption of negative 75,470 square feet. Asking rents were $2.65 a square foot during the fourth quarter.
Main Events
In Santa Clarita, office vacancy rates remained fairly steady, slightly rising from 23.6% in the previous quarter to 23.8% in the fourth quarter. Asking rents dipped 9 cents quarter over quarter to $2.64 a square foot.
Main Events
Antelope Valley’s industrial market remained strong, with 139,853 square feet under construction during the quarter. Vacancy rates rose slightly to 2.7%, up from 2.4% the previous quarter. Roughly 118,000 square feet sold or leased during the quarter.
Main Events
The Conejo Valley experienced a 21.5% vacancy rate during the fourth quarter, up from 21.1% in the previous quarter. Negative 27,000 square feet was absorbed during the quarter, bringing the total net absorption year to date to negative 16,880. No new office product was under construction.
Main Events
While Burbank had no new office construction, Glendale was busy at work, with 186,308 square feet under construction. In Burbank, the vacancy was 19.7%, up from 17.3% the previous quarter. In Glendale, the vacancy was 29.1%, up from 28.3% the previous quarter. Negative 184,891 square feet were absorbed in Burbank, compared with negative 55,314 square feet absorbed in Glendale. Burbank remained on top with higher asking rates, coming in at more than a dollar more expensive per square foot than Glendale.
Main Events
Office vacancy rates continued to rise in the fourth quarter in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County markets, as employers are still struggling to entice employees back for in-person operations.
The year ended at a 20.7% vacancy rate, up from 20.3% the previous quarter, according to Colliers data.
“Many chief executives are still at a loss for how to best handle the return to office, Christopher Baer, a principal and office expert at Avison Young, said.
Doubt in the traditional office model has led some companies not to renew their leases. Yet, despite the rise in vacancies, office experts believe the market is in slow recovery mode and that the worst is seemingly behind.
“The San Fernando Valley office market survived a challenging 2023 with nominal leases signed and few sales transacted,” Baer said. “Submarkets sustained 660,000 square feet of negative absorption, but interestingly enough had 13,000 square feet of positive net absorption in the fourth quarter.”
Baer noted that leasing activity has picked up as many suspect interest rates to plateau by the middle of the year. He believes this year will see more subleases turn into direct leases, which will positively impact vacancy rates but not availability rates.
“I think we’re going to see continued steady improvement,” David Solomon, a senior executive vice president and office expert at Colliers, said. “I think we’re going to continue to see rental rates slowly push up again.”
Solomon noted that he’s seen an uptick in occupancy and expects that trend to continue in the new year. However, he noted that things are “not improving on the ownership, capital side in terms of building valuations.”
“Tenant improvement (costs) have gone up exponentially,” Baer said. “It’s really difficult. What ends up happening is that landlords end up putting a lot more money in tenant improvements, and so do tenants, just in order to get their space built out for something that would have been a lot less expensive to build out pre-pandemic.”
Industrial market
On the industrial side of things, the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County market remained fairly tight.
The vacancy rate rose to 1.5%, up from 1.1% the previous quarter, according to Colliers – although experts noted this slight increase in leeway is actually healthy for the market.
“If you’re a tenant in a building and your lease is coming up and you want to move, either because of the functionality of the building, maybe you want a higher warehouse clear height, maybe you need more docks, maybe you want a different image, maybe you need more space, you go out to the market and look,” David Harding, an executive vice president and industrial expert at Colliers, said. “There just wasn’t a ton of options. (Extremely low vacancy rates) really paralyze the market a little bit because there’s not much movement. There’s nowhere to go.”
Andrew Berk, a principal and industrial expert at Avison Young, called the San Fernando Valley industrial market “chaotic and challenging.”
“You can look at numbers and look at the strength, and when you tell folks who are not in it every day that you’re in industrial, everyone looks at that asset class and says, ‘oh that must be great,’ without realizing the ramifications of coming with an extremely robust market,” Berk said. “It means that if you’re looking at a specific type of property or size, or with specific amenities, there’s only going to be one or two to choose from in a certain geography. So those challenges, and with pricing increases, it becomes a challenge to find something that makes sense for a lot of occupiers.”
In return, this has slowed transactions. “Folks who don’t have to sell, don’t want to sell,” he said. “Folks who want to buy, there’s not a lot to choose from.”
A $1 billion mixed-use project is planned for North Hollywood’s Arts District – one that experts believe will anchor the community and aid in reshaping the scope of the area.
District NoHo, which is being developed by Trammell Crow Co. and its affiliate High Street Residential, as appointed by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will span nearly 16 acres of land at the intersection of Lankershim and Chandler Boulevards, atop Metro’s already existing North Hollywood station.
“Metro is continually expanding their services to connect all of Los Angeles, making it increasingly advantageous to live and work on transit, and for developers to build there to meet that demand,” Greg Ames, senior managing director of Trammell Crow’s Southern California offices, said.
In total, the project will consist of 1,481 multifamily units – 366 of which will be income-restricted – plus 450,000 square feet of office space, 60,000 square feet of retail space, approximately 3,000 parking stalls and two acres of open space.
“It’s our largest assemblage to date of Metro-owned property around a station,” Wells Lawson, deputy executive office of joint development at Metro, said. “And it’s obviously a major station. It’s the third busiest in the Metro system.”
Dallas-based architecture firm HKS is the master planner of the project, overseeing its design as well as the other attached firms, including Culver City-based KFA Architecture, which is designing the affordable housing component, and San Francisco-based Gensler, which is designing the office space.
“The key to it has to do with collaboration,” said Greg Verabian, a partner and regional practice director of commercial and mixed-use projects at HKS Los Angeles. “It’s hard sometimes when you work with a bunch of designers. We all have our egos because design can be quite personal. But I think what was nice about this one is that everybody had space to develop something that they wanted to develop.”
Live, work and play
Built to stand on its own, District NoHo is intended to encapsulate all demands of life, where everything you need can theoretically exist in one place.
“The project itself is contemplated as a district,” Ames said. “There are architectural and design standards and an enhanced landscaping plan that really stitch this community together without creating any perceived barriers from the rest of the community. It’s very open and outwardly facing.”
Yet deeper within the district, broken down into eight blocks, each segment boasts a mixture of uses – from residential to office to retail and a plethora of restaurants.
“Each block could be independently built and could park itself and service itself without having to rely on other blocks providing any support for that,” Verabian said. “It becomes like filling in the voids of a neighborhood in a sense.”
One design element that Scott Baker, president and founder of RELM, the landscape architecture and urban design firm for the project, is particularly excited about is that District NoHo will bring the first ever shared street to Los Angeles.
“District Way (the street’s name) will be a very egalitarian, democratic street with no curbs where pedestrians and bikes and cars all can coexist,” Baker said, noting that cars will be “essentially put into a tertiary priority.”
“Looking at how we bring best practices to the district – how do we make it a pedestrian precinct specifically that accommodates bikes and reconciles bike movement – and connecting both pedestrians and bikes to transit, those have been key guiding strategies through the whole (landscaping) process,” he said.
Baker and his team are working to prioritize access to public space while ensuring sustainable initiatives are met, emphasizing strategies like shade equity and urban tree canopy.
North Hollywood evolution
The neighborhood of North Hollywood has been in the spotlight of transformation over the last few decades, spurred by the additions of the Red and Orange Lines.
“When the Red Line extension happened back in 1999, I had been living in North Hollywood and I could understand why North Hollywood is north of Hollywood because I can be in Hollywood in like six minutes,” Karen Swift, director of community relations at Metro, said. “All of a sudden it was this game changer.”
A project nine years in the making, District NoHo is expected to build upon the already established North Hollywood Metro station as part of an ongoing effort by Metro to build more transit-oriented communities.
“Transit brings communities together,” Lawson said, highlighting that one of the biggest pros of public transit is improving access to opportunities.
“Part of what you’re doing in providing transit is serving disproportionately low-income communities of color with more limited mobility options, but giving them vast mobility to this region,” Lawson said.
The project is intended to boost economic development by creating an estimated 10,000 jobs during construction and an additional 2,500 jobs through operations.
New York-based insurance service provider MetLife Investment Management is providing the exclusive capital means for the project and will be its owner upon completion.
Project impact
As Metro already owns the land, no businesses or residential units are expected to be displaced as a result of the new development. Instead, much of the project’s impact is measured in environmental and community concerns.
According to an environmental impact report analyzed by Los Angeles City Planning, the project would result in a number of significant and unavoidable project-level impacts, related to “air quality, historic resources, on-site construction noise, off-site construction noise, on-site construction vibration and off-site construction vibration.”
All other potential impacts would be less than significant or mitigated to less-than-significant levels, reads the report.
“The people who complain about revitalizing an area don’t want any change,” Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry Commerce Association, said. “Improving an area that was downtrodden is a good thing. And the people that don’t think that, you’re never going to make them happy.”
The project received unanimous initial approval by city council members in December and is anticipating concurrence from the city attorney’s office.
If all goes well, construction is expected to begin mid-next year and will be developed over the course of 10 years, with assets opening in up to six phases. Affordable housing units will be built with priority, with the district’s first mixed-income project expected to follow in 2026.
“I think it’s going to help reshape our city because it’s going to prove that developing and putting density at transit is the right thing to do,” Verabian said. “And that density and active public spaces aren’t something we should fear, but we should strive for.”
BG Law is having a bit of a growth spurt.
The Woodland Hills-based bankruptcy and insolvency boutique law firm, which has outposts in Las Vegas and Denver, bolstered its bankruptcy and corporate chops with a veteran hire late last year. And moving into this year, the firm aims to add to its Woodland Hills home, as well as its Denver operation.
“The firm had another good year last year and we expect even better this year. We’re hoping to grow,” managing partner Steve Gubner said. “We’re actively looking for another associate right now and will hopefully have one by the end of the first quarter.”
Last year, BG Law was ranked No. 19 by attorney headcount on the San Fernando Valley Business Journal’s list of law firms.
The firm’s newest addition, partner David Poitras, brought decades of experience. He most recently was general counsel for Redondo Beach-based Wedgewood LLC – a network of real estate and real estate loan companies – where he managed a team covering 20 states. Prior to that, he was a partner at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP in Century City.
“I strongly believe my joining BG Law will be a win-win for me and the firm, and I look forward to getting back to private practice and its challenges,” Poitras said.
Gubner said he’s known Poitras for 30 years and added that he’d been trying to recruit Poitras since his Jeffer Mangels days, and in particular values his ability to manage a large number of people working on a multitude of cases. In his career, Poitras has managed numerous nine-figure insolvency cases – a strong resume to bring to an insolvency boutique.
“He has the patience of Job and the ability to manage multiple matters and pieces of cases simultaneously,” Gubner added.
In another recent win for the firm, partner Jessica Bagdanov was selected for the American Bankruptcy Institute’s 40 Under 40 class for 2023.
With an eye on the future, Camarillo-based employment law firm LightGabler LLP has named five new partners.
Not counting name partners Jon Light and Karen Gabler, the promotions represent 25% of the firm’s attorney headcount. Light, who is the firm’s managing partner, said the move, made this month, to give those partners a stake in the operation was to signal his confidence in their leadership.
“I wanted to create some continuity for the future,” he said. “They’ve got a 20-to-25-year shelf life, and this really sets us up for the future. They’re going to be the heart of the firm for the next five, 10, 15 years.”
The new partners are Chandra Beaton, Ryan Haws, Michael Brody, Jamie Stein and Angela Lopez.
Light said the attorneys’ time at LightGabler runs from about four years to more than 20, while their practices cover a wide range of employment litigation and employment counseling.
Beaton’s practice covers disputes including construction defects, personal injury, intellectual property and general liability, among others. Haws handles a variety of workplace disputes and compliance issues. Both Brody and Stein cover wrongful termination, workplace harassment and discrimination, wage and hour claims and other individualized disputes, while Lopez also picks up those areas plus compliance issues.
One consistency among the group, Light said: no egos.
“We don’t put up with egos,” he said. “It’s really been a pleasant firm, and I try to sustain that by hiring good people.”
Since forming in 2011, when Light left the since-shuttered Nordman Cormany Hair & Compton in Oxnard, LightGabler has grown from five lawyers, an administrator and paralegal to 20 attorneys, five administrators and five paralegals. It has a second location in San Luis Obispo, and Light noted that the firm posted a 20% revenue growth in 2020 in spite of the pandemic. At the moment, the firm is handling 98 class-action lawsuits.
“Year over year, we’ve had growth in terms of people. We’ve had positive growth, even during Covid,” he said. “That’s the best part about employment law. It’s noncyclical. In good times it’s busy, and in bad times it’s busy.”
And while Light formed the firm without having an institutional legacy in mind, it’s an idea that has crept into place recently. He admitted that while he’s counting down the years until his retirement and no longer has the energy for trials, his younger attorneys have taken the reins and made it worthwhile for the firm to invest in their careers here now.
That investment, Light added, creates a “bedrock foundation” to continue the firm’s work and growth.
“I really wanted to create a legacy for these folks and give them something to work with,” he said. “For the next 10 years, we’re dialed in.”
Lewitt, Hackman, Shapiro, Marshall & Harlan has named a new practice group leader and elevated one of its attorneys to shareholder.
Shareholder Nicholas Kanter was earlier this month made chair of the firm’s business litigation practice group. Meanwhile, employment law attorney Tal Burnovski Yeyni was made a shareholder for the firm. Managing shareholder Keith Zimmet noted that an elevation to shareholder amounted to a long-term leadership role in the mid-size firm.
Lewitt Hackman does not publicly disclose who are equity or nonequity shareholders.
Kanter, who joined the firm in 2005, has focused on employment and real estate litigation throughout his career. Zimmet said Kanter’s experience and tenure give him the demeanor for leadership.
“In terms of this particular position, he has a calm demeanor and the ability to build a shared consensus,” he added. “We have about 20 or so litigators here in various practices and I thought he was an excellent person to work with that diverse group of practices and people.”
Kanter said he relished a leadership role as the firm positioned itself to take on more complex cases.
“I intend to build on our past and guide our litigation practice into the future through innovative technological advancements to improve efficiencies in litigation that will be of great benefit to our clients and our firm,” he said in a statement. “I also intend to have our more senior litigators, including myself, continue to mentor junior litigators so they develop the litigation skills necessary to better serve our clients and to further their careers.”
Yeyni, who joined in 2015, handles employer risk reduction and compliance matters.
“I am very fortunate that throughout my career as an attorney, in Israel and California, I worked with amazing colleagues and mentors,” she said in a statement. “I have been with Lewitt Hackman for nine years and appreciate the invaluable support from my colleagues here.”
Zimmet said Yeyni had checked off all of the boxes for leadership at the firm.
“She’s shown an ability to generate business and maintain client relationships,” he said. “That’s a big thing that we look for when we look for someone to promote to shareholder.”
OpEd: Retail Thievery Is a Menace to Economy
In California, there is a looming threat jeopardizing the safety of our communities, and it poses a significant risk to our business community: retail theft and organized crime. This urgent issue demands attention from our local and state officials to safeguard our retail businesses and the overall well-being of our state’s economy.
California, once synonymous with the three-strike rule, witnessed a transformative shift in its approach to dealing with crime. The elimination of the three-strike rule and the changes brought by Proposition 47, which made stealing less than $950 a misdemeanor, aiming for “fairness” in our justice system, paved the way for a troubling surge in retail theft and organized crime, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Contrary to the idea that economic hardships drive crime, the surge in retail theft has persisted even amid improving economic conditions. Even before the onset of the pandemic, major metropolitan areas in California were experiencing increases in retail theft, with the pandemic further prompting several locales to experience a shocking 700% rise in incidents. In a 2023 Retail Security Survey, data shows an increase in the “shrink rate,” representing the percentage of inventory loss due to factors like theft, escalating from 1.4% in 2021 to 1.6% in 2022, signifying an annual loss of $112 billion for 177 retail brands. What’s further concerning is that in the same survey respondents shared a concerning trend: an increase in the violence accompanying retail theft incidents, with obvious negative impacts on employees, bystanders and businesses.
The nature of retail theft has evolved and is now entrenched by organized crime rings. Large-scale theft events, such as mass shoplifting and smash-and-grab incidents, have become commonplace in California and other parts of the United States. California has three cities in the top 10 for high retail theft, and Los Angeles is No. 1 for the last five years.
This unacceptable trend prompted the Valley Industry and Commerce Association’s support for legislative measures such as Assembly Bill 1613 and Senate Bill 301 during the 2021 and 2022 legislative sessions.
SB 301 looks to protect consumers and third-party resale platforms by imposing unified standards on high-volume sellers and preventing the sale of stolen merchandise, while AB 1613 expands the attorney general’s territorial jurisdiction for prosecuting theft offenses.
While the governor signed these commendable proposals into law, much more is needed regarding comprehensive measures to address the growing menace of retail theft.
And now, most of our elected officials are starting to get the message. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent call to create new laws to crack down on professional thieves and bolster police and prosecutor tools is a step in the right direction. State legislators have proposed more than a dozen new anti-theft proposals within the first two weeks of the 2024 session, and we can anticipate more proposals leading up to the February deadline. Additionally, a Select Committee on Retail Theft was created this legislative session and is chaired by Assemblymember Rick Zbur and has Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo – both represent portions of the San Fernando Valley – as part of its committee membership. Their inclusion and leadership within this committee underscores the significance of organized retail crime within Los Angeles County, specifically within local economies that rely on retail businesses. And moving forward, the focus should be on increasing penalties, mandating prosecutorial action and enabling cross-jurisdictional legal action.
Law enforcement agencies are also taking steps to respond to the crisis, with the California Highway Patrol increasing operations by over 310% by tripling CHP resources in Los Angeles County, with an allocation of $267 million to enhance local law enforcement capabilities, resulting in more than 1,000 arrests in the first 11 months of last year.
At the local level, the Retail Theft Task Force, comprising investigators from various law enforcement agencies including police departments in Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale and Los Angeles as well as the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, resulted in 89 arrests and the recovery of more than $370,000 of stolen merchandise within the first five weeks of its inception.
As California steps into the new year, state and local governments must prove to the business community that the Golden State remains a safe and viable place for investment. Elected officials must ensure the enforcement of laws, prosecutors must actively pursue cases and the state and local governments must direct their enforcement agencies to combat these threats to our safety and economy.
Our retail businesses are not expendable, and the lack of safety our retail businesses have creates a detrimental ripple effect that impacts job opportunities and fosters increased illegal activity.
It is time for California to show retail businesses are not an afterthought or not worthy of the protection that they absolutely deserve.
Stuart Waldman is president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a business-advocacy organization based in Van Nuys that represents employers in the San Fernando Valley area at the federal, state and local levels of government.