Daily Business Report-March 9, 2017
Painting by Sheena Rae Dowling. (Photo: Pablo Mason)
Intergalactic Dreaming Exhibition Opens
at San Diego International Airport
Airport-wide display inspired by space exploration and the cosmos
San Diego International Airport has unveiled “Intergalactic Dreaming,” a display by local artists and institutions that explore notions of celestial phenomena and astronomy.
The arwork is part of the Airport Arts Program’s 2017 temporary exhibition.
“A key goal of the airport’s Arts Program is to find creative ways to showcase the talent and cultural community of San Diego, and one way we accomplish that is through our temporary exhibitions program,” said Thella F. Bowens, President/CEO of the Airport Authority. “By highlighting collections and original artwork developed around a relevant theme, travelers and visitors through SAN are taken on a unique visual journey.”
The year-long exhibition features 15 distinct installations displayed throughout the airport by 15 different artists and organizations, including: Adriene Hughes; Don Porcella; student artists from Southwestern College; Joshua Krause; Carolina Montejo; artists working with NASA/JPL-Caltech; objects from renowned science fiction collector, Edward Marsh; Matthew Bradley; San Diego Air & Space Museum; Sheena Rae Dowling; students from High Tech High Chula Vista; Irene De Watteville; Lisa Blatt; Melissa Walter, and Michael Giancristiano.
Exhibition highlights include:
Photographs taken exclusively with a cell phone from Adriene Hughes’ “Dreaming of You” series, challenging viewers to question the presence of extraterrestrial beings; oil paintings featuring interstellar nebulas by Sheena Rae Dowling, as well as a piano adorned with her artwork, available for the traveling public to play; sculptures embodying alter egos of students from High Tech High Chula Vista, made from pipe cleaners as part of an artmaking workshop with artist Don Porcella.
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Fault System Off San Diego,
Orange, Los Angeles Counties
Could Produce Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake
A fault system that runs from San Diego to Los Angeles is capable of producing up to magnitude 7.3 earthquakes if the offshore segments rupture and a 7.4 if the southern onshore segment also ruptures, according to an analysis led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
The Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon faults had been considered separate systems but the study shows that they are actually one continuous fault system running from San Diego Bay to Seal Beach in Orange County, then on land through the Los Angeles basin.
“This system is mostly offshore but never more than four miles from the San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles County coast,” said study lead author Valerie Sahakian, who performed the work during her doctorate at Scripps and is now a postdoctoral fellow with the U.S. Geological Survey. “Even if you have a high 5- or low 6-magnitude earthquake, it can still have a major impact on those regions which are some of the most densely populated in California.”
The study, “Seismic constraints on the architecture of the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon Fault: Implications for the length and magnitude of future earthquake ruptures,” appears in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research.
The researchers processed data from previous seismic surveys and supplemented it with high-resolution bathymetric data gathered offshore by Scripps researchers between 2006 and 2009 and seismic surveys conducted aboard former Scripps research vessels New Horizon and Melville in 2013. The disparate data have different resolution scales and depth of penetration providing a “nested survey” of the region. This nested approach allowed the scientists to define the fault architecture at an unprecedented scale and thus to create magnitude estimates with more certainty.
They identified four segments of the strike-slip fault that are broken up by what geoscientists call stepovers, points where the fault is horizontally offset. Scientists generally consider stepovers wider than three kilometers more likely to inhibit ruptures along entire faults and instead contain them to individual segments – creating smaller earthquakes. Because the stepovers in the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon (NIRC) fault are two kilometers wide or less, the Scripps-led team considers a rupture of all the offshore segments is possible, said study co-author Scripps geologist and geophysicist Neal Driscoll.
The team used two estimation methods to derive the maximum potential a rupture of the entire fault, including one onshore and offshore portions. Both methods yielded estimates between magnitude 6.7 and magnitude 7.3 to 7.4.
The fault system most famously hosted a 6.4-magnitude quake in Long Beach, Calif. that killed 115 people in 1933. Researchers have found evidence of earlier earthquakes of indeterminate size on onshore portions of the fault, finding that at the northern end of the fault system, there have been between three and five ruptures in the last 11,000 years. At the southern end, there is evidence of a quake that took place roughly 400 years ago and little significant activity for 5,000 years before that.
Driscoll has recently collected long sediment cores along the offshore portion of the fault to date previous ruptures along the offshore segments, but the work was not part of this study.
In addition to Sahakian and Driscoll, study authors include Jayne Bormann, Graham Kent, and Steve Wesnousky of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Alistair Harding of Scripps. Southern California Edison funded the research at the direction of the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission.
“Further study is warranted to improve the current understanding of hazard and potential ground shaking posed to urban coastal areas from Tijuana to Los Angeles from the NIRC fault,” the study concludes.
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An expert on leadership and communication
Deirdre Maloney helps women exceed their goals and sleep better at night. She does it through her work as a published author, national speaker, and proud president of her training, facilitation and marketing company, Momentum LLC.
Maloney has used her brand of “mild audacity” to speak on leadership and communication around the country, presenting Keynotes and workshops for organizations like Boeing, the National Association of Women Business Owners, and Vistage International.
Maloney’s popular blog on all things leadership, a regular feature on huffingtonpost.com, is a hit with anyone who likes a direct, authentic style with their morning coffee. Her books include “Bogus Balance: Your Journey to Real Work/Life Bliss,” “Tough Truths: The 10 Leadership Lessons We Don’t Talk About,” and “The Mission Myth.”
She will be one of the speakers on opening day of San Diego Women’s Week on March 20. The event is from noon to 7 p.m. at Wyland Center Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar.
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Smith Consulting Architects Completes
Industrial Complex at Bressi Ranch
Smith consulting Architects, a San Diego-based architectural firm, has completed the design, entitlements, construction documents and construction administration for the new Shea Center Carlsbad, a 114,522-square-foot, Class-A industrial complex located at 6131-6133 Innovation Way within the master-planned community of Bressi Ranch in Carlsbad.
Smith Consulting Architects performed the project on behalf of Shea Properties, with Shea’s Development Manager Steve Perales providing oversight. The project was budgeted at $7.8 million.
Situated on an 8.27-acre lot, the new industrial facility encompasses two identical 57,261-square-foot buildings. Each offers a high-bay warehouse comprising approximately 51,372 square feet of space, together with two-story move-in-ready office space. Each building features four loading docks, three grade-level doors, 30-foot clear-height, ESFR sprinkler systems, 40-foot by 60-foot column spacing, and a 2.9/1,000-square-foot parking ratio.
Pete Bussett served as project executive for Smith Consulting Architects, with Gary Baker as project designer and Rick Cotton as project architect. Katie Hale was the interior designer. Project consultants included HTK Structural Engineering, Excel Engineering, MPE Consulting, McParlane & Associates, and Ridge Landscape Architects. TFW Construction was the general contractor.
To date, 32,227 square feet of space has been leased in one of the two buildings. Voit Commercial is handling leasing for Shea Center Carlsbad.
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Pension Costs Rise Across San Diego County
Pension obligations continue to grow among cities in San Diego County, but some cities are making significantly more progress than others in reducing their unfunded pension liability, according to a new report by the San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation.
The annual report examines each city’s funded ratio, which compares assets to liabilities, through fiscal year 2015. While no city has reached the goal of 100 percent funded, most cities moved closer to that target. Between 2011 and 2015, the cities of San Marcos, Coronado, Carlsbad, Encinitas and Oceanside increased their funding ratio by 10 percent or more, the report found.
“The San Diego Taxpayers Educational Foundation has created a thorough report on the status of the region’s public pension funds to demonstrate their effects on taxpayers,” SDCTA President & CEO Haney Hong said.
Hong added: “As the report indicates, governments throughout San Diego County need to reduce unfunded pension liabilities and provide defined contribution retirement plans to lower future risks to taxpayers. High pension debt means higher annual costs, tying up tax dollars that could instead be used for police and fire protection, road repairs and other vital community services.”
Of all cities in San Diego County, Coronado has the highest funded ratio – the value of a pension plan’s assets versus benefits owed – at 81.01 percent. But even at that level, each Coronado resident is on the hook for $1,244.16 of unfunded benefits. And that Coronado resident, as a resident of San Diego County, also is on the hook for an additional $595.53 of unfunded benefits for the county retirement plan.
The per-capita estimated municipal contribution to fund pensions varies greatly across the county. In Lemon Grove, for example, each resident currently pays $39.91 annually in taxes toward the city’s pension obligations, while a city of San Diego taxpayer contributes $233.17 annually. Only residents in Del Mar pay more than San Diegans, and these contributions will increase for most cities because recipients are living longer.
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February Existing Home Sales
In County Little Changed
Median prices remain strong
February sales of existing homes in San Diego County saw little change from January, despite the month being shorter by three days, according to housing statistics from the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors.
Single-family home sales were up 1 percent month over month, while attached home sales (condominiums and townhomes) were down only 1 percent.
In February, the price of all resale properties grew by 1 percent in a month, with the single-family median price standing at $565,000, and condos/townhomes reaching $385,000. The year-over-year price increase is 8 percent for single-family homes, and 10 percent for attached homes.
The supply of resale properties on the market has held at 1.5 months for the past three months. (Five to six months is considered a healthy level.) Homes were selling in February in an average of 33 days.
“The low-inventory situation and affordability crunch has been particularly hard on first-time home buyers” said SDAR President Bob Kevane. “The bright spot for sellers is that they are getting a generous number of offers and receiving close to 100 percent of their asking price.”
In February, the ZIP codes in San Diego County with the most single-family home sales were:
91977 (Spring Valley) with 43
92028 (Fallbrook) with 39
92064 (Poway) with 38
92065 (Ramona) with 37
91910 (Chula Vista North) with 33
The most expensive property sold in the county last month was a 6,200-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 4-bath, oceanfront home in La Jolla, built in 1993, with a price $12 million.
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Hughes Unveils Satellite Service
For Distributed Organizations
ExecutiveBiz
Hughes Network Systems in San Diego has unveiled a high-throughput satellite service offering designed for large government or business organizations.
The Hughes HTS service offers a download speed of up to 50 megabits per second, an upload capacity of 5 Mbps and a range of data usage allowances, the company said Tuesday.
The service works to help enterprises provide connectivity to branch sites or back up their ethernet access, Hughes added.
Mike Cook, senior vice president of Hughes’ North American arm, said the company introduced HTS to provide broadband connectivity for enterprise customers across U.S.
HTS is part of the HughesON line of managed services for large distributed organizations, the company noted.
The new service utilizes the EchoStar XIX broadband satellite connected to 138 spot beams within the continental U.S., Alaska, Canada and Central America.
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New TSRI Study Points to Potential
Strategy to Kill Cancer Cells
Research findings that first had scientists scratching their heads have turned out to be “quite revolutionary,” according to study leaders at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI).
The scientists found that in a competition between two apparently equivalent proteins, one protein wins out every time as it swoops in to claim a cellular binding target. This protein is of special interest to researchers because it can trigger cancer cells to kill themselves. In fact, the researchers now hope future therapeutics that mimic this protein may work as potential cancer drugs.
“This work at the molecular level has a real potential to benefit patients,” said TSRI Research Associate Rebecca Berlow, first author of the new study, published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
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County’s Annual Property Tax
Sale Auction Goes Online
San Diego County Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister announced he is moving the annual property tax sale auction online.
“With this new system, people sitting at home can browse and bid on more than 1,600 properties currently available, including timeshares starting at $900,” said McAllister. “The online auction aligns with our ‘e-nitiative’ to make it easier and more efficient to do all business with us electronically.”
The online tax sale auction will take place May 5-10. Interested buyers can register as a bidder beginning April 5, and registration will end April 27. Bidders must put up a $1,000 advance and a nonrefundable $35 bid processing fee.
“Moving this tax sale online will cut our operation costs compared to a live auction,” said McAllister. “We also hope to sell more properties as we open the auction up to bidders outside the San Diego region – even around the world.”
All sales are final, so this is a buyer beware sale. Before April, the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office encourages everyone to research the selection of available properties on its website, www.sdtreastax.com.
Currently there are about 1,600 parcels available, roughly four times the number put up for auction in previous years. The majority – 1,231 – are timeshares, many with minimum bids as low as $900.
The remaining 393 parcels are improved and unimproved properties, 39 of which have owners living in them. Owners of the for-sale properties can redeem them by paying owed taxes and fees until 5 p.m. on May 4. Over the past five years, TTC notices and late bills to these owners have not been responded to. In early April, each of the properties will be personally contacted by TTC staff who will warn them of the impending sale.
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Carrie Ann Inaba Receives
Helen Woodward Humane Award
Helen Woodward Animal Center has presented Carrie Ann Inaba, award-winning television host, dancer, choreographer and producer, with the 2017 Helen Woodward Humane Award.
Inaba, an animal advocate, was spokesperson for the center’s 2015 International Remember Me Thursday campaign.
Although best known for her passion for dance as a judge on the ABC hit, “Dancing With The Stars,” it is her great love for animals that inspired Inaba to found the charitable organization The Animal Project Foundation in 2012. The organization provides funding to grassroots animal rescue groups, assisting with emergency rescue and medical costs, fostering and adoption of high-risk animals, and provides access to free spay and neuter services.
Inaba’s participation in the Helen Woodward Animal Center’s Remember Me Thursday campaign included the creation of a public service announcement, encouraging the world to take part by sharing photos of their rescue pets on the fourth Thursday in September. She went further, personally urging the entire Dancing with the Stars cast and crew to join in by passing out campaign t-shirts, enthusiastically sharing images of her own adopted pets and displaying a symbolic candle on the judges table.
