Daily Business Report-Feb. 22, 2018

Kratos Defense and Security Solutions is headquartered in Scripps Plaza (Photo courtesy of Kidder Mathews)

San Diego Defense Contractor Gets $81 Million

Contract to Supply Drones to Government

ExecutiveBiz

San Diego-based Kratos Defense and Security Solutions has received a potential five-year, $81 million contract to supply unmanned drone systems to a U.S. government agency.

The company said it will also provide command, control and communications services to the customer agency through the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract.

Eric DeMarco, president and CEO of Kratos, said the company’s unmanned systems division recently secured a $93 million contract from the U.S. Army and another $23 million production contract from an undisclosed client.

“We believe that each of these awards are representative of the continued successful execution of the strategy we began a few years ago to be the industry leader in the rapid development, demonstration and fielding of technology leading systems and products at an affordable cost in our core business areas of satellite communications, unmanned systems, microwave electronics, missile defense and training systems,” said DeMarco.

Steve Fendley, president of Kratos’ unmanned systems division, said the company seeks to apply its intellectual property technologies or government-funded/owned IP to support military unmanned system requirements.

The division works with customers to help them design, build and field jet-powered unmanned aerial platforms for tactical, combat and target operations.

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More S.D. Community College District Students

Earning Degrees, Transferring to Universities

The San Diego Community College District (SDCCD) is seeing significant jumps in the number of students earning degrees and certificates and transferring to four-year colleges and universities, according to a new analysis.

Among the highlights in the analysis titled “Changing the Lives of Our Students”:

• Degree completion has increased by 51 percent in the past three years to 3,319, the number of Associate Degrees for Transfer awarded has more than doubled to 1,299, the number of credit certificates has increased 21 percent to 1,735, and the number of non-credit certificates has jumped by 77 percent to 9,399.
• The number of students transferring to a four-year college or university has increased by 16 percent from three years ago to nearly 4,000, including a 19 percent increase among African-American students, and a 41 percent increase among Latino students.
• The average GPA has increased from 2.68 to 2.73 over the past three years, and the number of students completing 30 units – which is considered an important benchmark of student success – has increased by 13 percent.

Joe Newell, president of San Diego Mesa College’s Associated Student Government, embodies the growing success rates. Newell said he wasn’t sure about his future when he decided to enroll at Mesa in the fall of 2015. “I wasn’t the best student in high school and I wasn’t all that focused, but I signed up for orientation, started to talking to counselors and was shown pretty quickly what is possible if you take things step by step,” Newell said. “It became clear the support was there to get me wherever I wanted to go.”

Living with dysgraphia and ADHD, Newell found all the backing he needed through Disability Support Programs and Services (DSPS). Now he is on his way to a University of California campus to study sociology with plans to later enroll in law school.

Alannah Nguyen-Dela Cruz was introduced to the support available at San Diego Miramar College when the college assigned her a student mentor while she was still a senior at Mira Mesa High School. Nguyen-Dela Cruz was taking calculus and political science courses at Miramar through a concurrent enrollment program. Since graduating in June of 2017 and enrolling at Miramar in the fall, Nguyen-Dela Cruz has met with counselors to develop an education plan and makes herself at home at the Miramar College Academic Success Center.

“If you look for help, it’s pretty easy to find,” said Nguyen-Dela Cruz, who is on track to transfer to a four-year college or university in the fall of 2019. “Everybody at the college has been pretty supportive and encouraging. I’m really enjoying it here.”

The stakes are high. Students who earn an associate degree can more than double their annual pre-degree earnings after just two years in the workforce depending on their field of study, according to data from the California Community Colleges system. And approximately 44 percent of students who secure a certificate earned $56,000 or more annually five years after graduating.

“Thanks to the counseling, support services, and EOPS (an acronym for Extended Opportunity Programs and Services) at San Diego City College, I was able to earn a degree and find what I wanted for a career,” said Ignacio Hernandez Valverde, the school’s Associated Student Government president who is transferring this fall to either USC or UCLA to study film production. “There are plenty of resources available here and everybody is here to help.”

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Plans Disclosed to Redevelop

Grand Pacific Hotel Building

RMD Group, a development and management company, announced plans to redevelop the historic Grand Pacific Hotel, a 15,000-square-foot building in the heart of Downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. The plans include a long-term lease with San Diego-based real estate investment and management company HP investors.

The property, located at 360 Fifth Ave., benefits from its high-traffic location on the corner of Fifth and J Streets. It will be transformed into a multi-level, multi-concept restaurant and bar, according to the announcement.

RMD Group will begin its multimillion-dollar investment into the property starting spring 2018. The new, yet-to-be-named concept will open to the public in mid-2019.

“The Gaslamp truly is ‘home’ for us at RMD Group, so when we heard about the opportunity with this historic space located in our own backyard, we naturally jumped at the chance to work with HP Investors to develop an entertainment and dining destination unlike anything we’ve created before,” said RMD Group Partner Michael Georgopoulos. “Our goal is to establish a true entertainment hub where food, wine, beer, cocktails and music come together in a variety of unique spaces and experiences perfect for everyday dining, drinking and special large-scale meetings and events.”

“The Grand Pacific Hotel is a historic and important building for San Diego, so we wanted to focus on a thoughtful redevelopment of the site that kept the integrity of the building while offering a modern concept that reflects the future of the Gaslamp,” said HP Investors Managing Partner Sumeet Parekh. “In RMD, we got a partner who has the experience and knowledge to not only pull off the renovation but also be successful long-term.”

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USD Ranks High in Peace Corps List

of Top Volunteer-Producing Schools

The Peace Corps announced that University of San Diego ranked No. 16 among medium schools on the agency’s 2018 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list. There are 18 Toreros currently volunteering worldwide. USD has ranked as a top volunteer-producing school for three consecutive years, and a total of 224 alumni have traveled abroad to serve as volunteers.

Alumni from more than 3,000 colleges and universities nationwide have served in the Peace Corps since the agency’s founding in 1961. USD is one of seven California universities making this year’s list. In 2017, California ranked No. 1 among states with the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers, with 873 volunteers serving worldwide.

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USNS Mercy Hospital Ship to Depart

Friday for Pacific Partnership Mission

The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy is scheduled to depart Friday from its homeport of San Diego for Pacific Partnership 2018, the largest annual multilateral disaster response preparedness mission conducted in the Indo-Pacific region.

Led by the embarked staff of Commander, Destroyer Squadron 31, Mercy and the expeditionary fast transport ship USNS Fall River, along with more than 800 military and civilian personnel from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Peru, and Japan, will join allied and partner nation militaries for the 13th Pacific Partnership mission.

Mercy is scheduled to make mission stops in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Medical, dental, civil-engineering, and veterinary teams will partner with each host nation to conduct civic-action projects, community health exchanges, medical symposiums, and disaster response training activities. Additional community relations engagements will occur in each mission stop to enhance relationships and camaraderie with citizens of the host nations. Following the mission stops, Mercy will also visit Japan during its return transit across the Pacific Ocean.

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First Surety Bond Program for Cannabis

Industry Approved by Insurance Commissioner

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced Wednesday he has approved the first surety bond program for the cannabis industry in California. Continental Heritage Insurance Co.  is the first insurer in the state to be approved to offer surety bonds for the cannabis industry.

Cannabis Surety Bonds are needed for various entities seeking licensure under the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act.

The State of California requires a surety bond in the amount of $5,000 for most licensing categories.

Surety bonds are required by licensing agencies to guarantee the behavior of licensees. A license bond guarantees that the entity will comply with the laws and regulations for that entity.

The new program from Continental Heritage is the first-of-its-kind for California’s new and evolving cannabis industry.

“Cannabis businesses should have insurance coverage available to them just like any other California business,” said Jones.

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St. Paul’s PACE Opens New 

Care Program in El Cajon

St. Paul’s Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) opens its new El Cajon Center in early March, following a grand opening celebration on Friday. The new St. Paul’s PACE East Center is located at 1306 Broadway. The project broke ground in September with contractor Nielsen Construction California.
This is the third St. Paul’s PACE program location (others are Downtown on Elm Street and in Chula Vista).
St. Paul’s Senior Services opened the first St. Paul’s PACE program in San Diego in 2008. As a managed care health plan exclusively for seniors, St. Paul’s PACE is for seniors with chronic medical conditions who find it challenging to live at home independently.
St. Paul’s PACE is conducting a capital campaign to underwrite expenses associated with the start-up of the new PACE Center.

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Personnel Announcements

Mauro Colabianchi Joins McLaughlin Legal

McLaughlin Legal, a San Diego-based tax litigation, tax controversy and estate planning firm for small to mid-sized companies and business owners, announced the addition of Mauro Colabianchi to the team.

Colabianchi will handle all facets of federal and California tax law for the firm’s clients, with particular emphasis in McLaughlin Legal’s Tax Litigation and Controversy area.

Before joining McLaughlin Legal, Colabianchi worked five years as an associate attorney with another boutique litigation firm.

His practice as a tax attorney involves representing individuals and businesses before the Internal Revenue Service, Franchise Tax Board, Employment Development Department, California Department of Tax and Fee Administration and others. Colabianchi received both his LL.M (Master of Laws) and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of San Diego. The California Bar Association admitted him in 2012.

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Philip Short Joins RBTK LLP

University City resident Philip Short has been hired by San Diego-based CPA firm RBTK LLP as an accounting associate. In this role, Short will be responsible for managing accounting services for a wide variety of RBTK clients.

Short’s career has included three years working for a Las Vegas company auditing casinos and two years working for a Tucson, Ariz. company auditing school districts.

Short attended college at the University of Idaho, where he received a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

 

 

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