Daily Business Report-June 23, 2015

Rendering of a proposed stadium that was released by San Diego Councilman Scott Sherman in April. 

The Stadium Issue

San Diego City Representatives

To Talk Today With NFL Officials

San Diego city representatives are scheduled to meet with senior National Football League officials in New York City today to discuss an effort by the city and county to build a new stadium in Mission Valley.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer spoke by telephone with National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell for about 45 minutes Monday to outline efforts by the city and county, the mayor’s office said.

“The mayor discussed the actions San Diego has and continues to take toward a new stadium, and expressed his commitment to moving forward with a fair plan that meets the needs of the community and the team,” mayoral spokesman Matt Awbrey said.

The discussion came after negotiations between the city, county and Chargers broke off in acrimony last week when team executives rejected a proposed timeline for conducting environmental studies of the proposed stadium site in Mission Valley.

Faulconer held a news conference to say he would take San Diego’s case for keeping the team directly to the NFL.

“Mayor Faulconer and Commissioner Goodell agreed that the city-county negotiating team and NFL will continue to communicate ahead of the NFL owners meeting on Aug. 11,” Awbrey said.

“(Tuesday), the chief negotiator for the city and county will meet in New York City with NFL senior officials,” Awbrey said. “He will provide an update on San Diego’s environmental analysis for a new stadium and proposed timelines to bring the issue before voters.”

The Chargers said they don’t believe a legally viable environmental plan can be completed before league officials make decisions on their long-awaited return to Los Angeles, where they played in their inaugural 1960 season.

Government and team executives both want to have a public vote on any stadium agreement in order to validate their plans, even though it isn’t expected to include tax increases.

If the Mission Valley stadium is built, it would be home for the Chargers, San Diego State University football team, Holiday and Poinsettia bowls, high school championships and special events.

— City News Service

Del Mar Corporate Plaza Sold for $29.4 Million

The Del Mar Corporate Plaza in the Del Mar Highlands area has been sold for $29.4 million to Cruzan by Coast Income Properties.

Del Mar Corporate Plaza consists of two Class A, three-story multi-tenant office buildings. The structures total 73,500 square feet. It is located within walking distance to the Del Mar Highlands Town Center and the proposed One Paseo village center.

DTZ, which represented the buyer and seller, is handling leasing.

Parallel Capital Partners Pays $93.7 Million

For Office Building in Downtown Phoenix 

San Diego-based Parallel Capital Partners has acquired One North Central –a 20-story, 410,000-square-foot, Class A office building in downtown Phoenix — for $93.75 million. The tower was acquired from One North Central LLC.

Parallel Capital Partners said it will invest more than $1.5 million to renovate and upgrade the landmark property — including lobby modernizations, common area upgrades, a new tenant lounge and spec suites.

The tower was originally constructed in 2001 by Ryan Companies.

 

 

Benchmark Landscape Services Captures

Sweepstakes Award in Landscape Competition

Benchmark Landscape Services Inc. of San Diego has won the sweepstakes award in the Beautification Awards sponsored by the San Diego chapter of the California Landscape Contractors Association.

Benchmark was honored for best design and build construction for the B Street Sky Terrace in Downtown San Diego.

The Beautification Awards were for excellence in landscape installation and maintenance, demonstrating the best quality, construction, originality and attention to detail on 2014 projects.

Fifty-one awards were presented in 30 categories culled from 111 entries, which encompassed categories covering residential and commercial landscape construction, maintenance and renovation, along with water features, outdoor lighting and water-saving California-friendly landscaping.

A newly added top award category was the Conservation Award, for best transformed project renovated to conserve resources. The project that won this particular award — The Brickman Group of San Diego — was recognized for removing a substantial 3.5 acres of turf grass and replacing it with low water use plants and sustainable landscape materials at the SDG&E Century Park 1 and II in San Diego.

The President’s Award for best landscape renovation went to Gothic Landscape of Valencia for The Estates Models at Black Mountain Ranch in San Diego.

The Judges’ Award for residential maintenance went to The Brickman Group of San Diego for its work at the Campus Pointe in San Diego.

The Brickman Group also won the Conservation Award for best transformed project renovated to conserve resources for its work at the SDG&E Century Park I and II in San Diego.

EY Fetes Winners of the 2015

Entrepeneur of the Year Awards

Winners of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 Awards were feted at a gala event June 18 at the Fairmount Grand Del Mar resort in San Diego.

Hosted for the last 23 years by award-winning journalist and KUSI News co-anchor Sandra Maas, the gala was attended by 500 of San Diego’s elite business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Recipients of the award in San Diego have generated $650 million in aggregate revenue and employ over 3,500 people. The winning entrepreneurs were selected by an independent judging panel derived of previous winners of the award, leading CEOs, private capital investors and other regional business leaders.

The winners represent the thriving state of entrepreneurship in San Diego and hail from industries, including biotech, real estate, food and beverage and financial service.

Biotech/Technology

Dr. Rich Heyman, CEO, Seragon/Aragon Pharmaceuticals

Consumer Products

Jeff Church, CEO, Suja Juice

Lifestyle

Jeffery Sears, co-founder and CEO, and James Stuart, co-founder and chairman of PIRCH.

Financial Services

Mary Ann McGarry, CEO, Guild Mortgage Co.

Business Re-imagined

Robert Hayes, co-founder and CEO; Herbert Mutter, co-founder and chief business officer; and Peter Botz, co-founder and general counsel for Triton Management Services & Two Jinn.

Karina Contreras, 18-year-old CEO of Adelante Amistad, was awarded the Youth Scholarship Award. As part of the California Foundation Fund’s Youth Entrepreneurship Program, FutureBoss, Karina, a senior at Olympian High School, founded the company to help underserved elders in local communities live a high quality of life by providing innovative activities which enhance independence and dignity. In recognition of her entrepreneurial concept, Contreras was awarded a $1,000 college scholarship at the gala.

UC San DiegoScientists Create Synthetic

Membranes That Grow Like Living Cells

Chemists and biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in designing and synthesizing an artificial cell membrane capable of sustaining continual growth, just like a living cell.

Their achievement, detailed in a paper published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will allow scientists to more accurately replicate the behavior of living cell membranes, which until now have been modeled only by synthetic cell membranes without the ability to add new phospholipids.

“The membranes we created, though completely synthetic, mimic several features of more complex living organisms, such as the ability to adapt their composition in response to environmental cues,” said Neal Devaraj, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego who headed the research team, which included scientists from the campus’ BioCircuits Institute.

“Many other scientists have exploited the ability of lipids to self-assemble into bilayer vesicles with properties reminiscent of cellular membranes, but until now no one has been able to mimic nature’s ability to support persistent phospholipid membrane formation,” he explained. “We developed an artificial cell membrane that continually synthesizes all of the components needed to form additional catalytic membranes.”

“Our results demonstrate that complex lipid membranes capable of indefinite self-synthesis can emerge when supplied with simpler chemical building blocks,” said Devaraj. “Synthetic cell membranes that can grow like real membranes will be an important new tool for synthetic biology and origin of life studies.”