Daily Business Report-June 28, 2018
Renovate America’s new headquarters in the Rancho Vista Corporate Center. (Photos courtesy of Pacific Building Group)
Pacific Building Group completes
improvements to 2 corporate offices
Pacific Building Group has completed construction on two corporate offices in San Diego.
The company’s latest projects are:
Renovate America: Completed by Pacific Building Group, architecture firm Gensler and construction management firm Gilliland Construction Management, the new headquarters at 16409 W. Bernardo Drive in the Rancho Vista Corporate Center is now modern, light-filled, and showcases a blend of soft, earthy materials and sharp lines. Landlord Swift Real Estate Partners spent $20 million on the renovation, which included revamping an existing 150,000-square-foot building’s interior space and constructing a new 10,000-square-foot café building.
NuVasive: The 24,000 square-foot tenant improvement project included the creation of an open floor plan with numerous collaboration areas including conference rooms, labs, training rooms, quiet rooms, private offices and break areas. Completed in cooperation with Hollander Design Group, the improved building will support NuVasive’s employees, who develop minimally disruptive, procedurally-integrated solutions for the spine and beyond. The office is located on the NuVasive campus at 7475 Lusk Blvd. in San Diego. The $1.7 million remodel is a part of NuVasive’s campus expansion, which will also include a new Surgeon Experience Center that Pacific Building Group will construct.
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El Cordova Hotel completes
$1 million renovation
RAR Hospitality and El Cordova Hotel announced the completion of a $1 million renovation of the historic Orange Avenue hotel in Coronado.
New to the hotel are the updated lobby, standard and deluxe guest rooms, and spacious one to two-bedroom suites with comfortable bedroom furniture, modernized bathroom fixtures, amenities such as free WiFi Internet and flat screen televisions with complimentary HBO.
Hotel management firm RAR Hospitality managed the renovations of the 43-room property.
“The completion of this renovation is a milestone for the iconic El Cordova Hotel,” said Bob Rauch, founder and CEO of RAR Hospitality. “Nothing can replace the historic property’s natural beauty and charm, and El Cordova is dedicated to always providing
guests with the utmost comfort, personalized service and the latest amenities.”
El Cordova Hotel offers an informal Spanish garden and courtyard environment, a heated outdoor pool, hot tub and staff.
El Cordova is part of RAR Hospitality’s boutique hotel collection including Carlsbad by the Sea Resort, The Keating Hotel and The Lafayette Hotel, Swim Club & Bungalows.
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Salk Institute’s Janelle Ayres
wins Blavatnik National Award
for Young Scientists
Salk Institute Associate Professor Janelle Ayres has been named one of three winners of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, one of the world’s largest unrestricted prizes for early career scientists. Ayres, the laureate in the life sciences category, will receive $250,000 for her pioneering research in physiology and the study of the how bacteria interact with humans.
Ayres’ work is revolutionizing our understanding of host-pathogen interactions and has the potential to solve one of the greatest current public health threats: anti-microbial resistance.
“Janelle is one of the most original thinkers in the field of infectious disease research,” says Salk President Rusty Gage. “Her pioneering work on microbes has the potential to change human health in fundamental ways. We are elated the Blavatnik Foundation has recognized Janelle’s past accomplishments and future promise with this prestigious award.”
As a member of Salk’s NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis, Ayres works at the intersection of immunology, metabolism and microbiology, studying how our bodies stay healthy during infections. She takes an innovative approach grounded in mathematical and evolutionary predictions to understand how bacteria have evolved ways to promote our health. She uses these discoveries to develop new therapies for treating diseases.
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State regulator orders Equifax to correct
deficiencies that led to 2017 data breach
The California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) announced an agreement with Equifax Inc. that requires the credit reporting agency to correct numerous information security deficiencies that led to the 2017 data breach that affected 147 million U.S. consumers, including 15.5 million Californians.
“Equifax’s failure to properly secure confidential personal data caused widespread harm to California consumers,” said DBO Commissioner Jan Lynn Owen. “The breach never should have happened. This order will help ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Regulators from seven other states signed a consent order with Equifax. The other states include: Texas, New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Georgia, Alabama and Maine. In a joint regulatory examination led by Texas, the eight states found deficiencies in several facets of how Equifax operated and managed its information technology systems before the breach. While Equifax has moved to correct some of the problems, the consent order addresses deficiencies that have persisted.
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San Diego Humane Society hires more
staff to handle increased animal services
The San Diego Humane Society has hired a new Administrator of Veterinary Hospitals Loren Fish and Safety Manager Ray White in anticipation of the organization becoming the animal service provider in six additional cities effective July 1.
The number of animals in the organization’s care will increase from 30,000 to more than 50,000 each year.
Loren Fish has spent nearly four decades working in animal welfare, rescue and conservation. Most recently, he served as the project manager of an international effort to help save the endangered Vaquita in Mexico for the National Marine Mammal Foundation.
Ray White has spent the past 20 years in the Marine Corps, holding a number of safety-related positions, including chief drill instructor at MCRD. Among his many accomplishments he has received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for managing 20 emergency response projects rebuilding and restoring local city infrastructure in Rutbah, Iraq.
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Barons Market executive selected
as one of 2018’s Top Women in Grocery
Barons Market President of Marketing Rachel Shemirani has been selected as one of 2018’s Top Women in Grocery by Progressive Grocer, for her integral rold at the family-owned market. The award recognizes outstanding women in all positions of the food industry, from wholesaler and supplier to marketing and branding, who have demonstrated above-and-beyond achievements between April 2017 and March 2018.
“Over half of the management team at Barons Market are women. This award is a testament to their hard work and forward-thinking leadership,” says Shemirani. “I’m proud to work at a company where women can thrive and be a key part of the market’s success.”
When Shemirani’s father (Joe Shemirani) started Barons Market in 1993, Rachel took a job at the store in high school days – working at the register and learning the true meaning of customer experience. Shemirani worked her way up in her family’s company, eventually earning her current role as vice president of marketing.
Shemirani and the other awardees from a variety of fields within the grocery industry will be honored in Chicago on Nov. 8, 2018.
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MiraCosta Community College District
begins design of new facilities at San Elijo
The San Elijo Campus of the MiraCosta Community College District (MCCCD) is about to get a new look. Design work has started for a new Student Services and Administration Building that will provide a new gateway for the campus. Funding for the project is provided by Measure MM, the $455 million bond measure approved by district voters in November 2016.
The new building will replace the existing Administration Building and consolidate student service operations into a one-stop shop. The new building will provide administrative offices and meeting spaces that will allow staff to properly serve the student body. It will also address the identified space deficits and provide a new identity to the campus, improving wayfinding and the student experience.
Preliminary programming and space planning for the building includes an office size of 4,550 assignable square feet to include Admissions & Records, Cashier, Financial Aid, Counseling, Testing, and Administration/Instructional Services. The new facility will also include a new bookstore, multi-purpose room, and a variety of meeting spaces.
Design is currently underway. Construction is planned to start in August 2019 and be completed by July 2020.
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Jewish Family Service leads plan
to secure funding for Holocaust survivors
The State of California appropriated $3.6 million to create the California Holocaust Survivor Assistance Program, the first California-funded program that ensures that Holocaust survivors are able to live out their lives with dignity. The proposal for the program was initiated and stewarded by Jewish Family Service of San Diego, in partnership with the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California.
The money will be used to fund and supplement services including home care, case management, home-delivered meals, transportation and emergency financial assistance for approximately 600 additional elderly Holocaust survivors throughout California who are currently underserved by existing resources.
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Personnel Announcements
Richard Truss joins Jacob Tyler firm
Jacob Tyler, a San Diego-based branding and digital agency, announced the addition of Richard Truss as executive creative director. Truss will oversee the Jacob Tyler creative team and all creative output for local, national and global clients, including brand direction, design, writing, and vision, in addition to supporting the sales and new business efforts of the agency. He will be based out of the company’s Mission Valley office.
Truss brings over 25 years of experience to the Jacob Tyler team. Hailing from Las Vegas, Richard cut his teeth in the hospitality hotbed of the world.
“Richard and I worked together at a large creative marketing agency based in San Diego nearly two decades ago. He’s one of the best and most creative people I’ve ever worked with, and I am thrilled to have him back with us,” said Les Kollegian, CEO of Jacob Tyler. “Adding an ECD like Richard positions our agency for growth and assures our clients the very best product possible.”
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Commentary
Democrats try to flip San Diego,
California’s second largest county
By Dan Walters | CALmatters Columnist
San Diego County’s 3.3 million residents make it California’s second largest county, and by happenstance, a political microcosm of the state.
San Diego’s multicultural inner-city neighborhoods and affluent coastal enclaves now vote Democratic, while the county’s inland suburbs and rural hamlets retain, albeit diminished, their conservative traits. While Democrats hold an overall 36.5 percent to 29 percent voter registration edge, in real terms the county is something of a partisan tossup.
A bitterly fought, high-dollar battle this year in the traditionally Republican 49th Congressional District along the county’s northern border (and bleeding into Orange County) symbolizes Democratic hopes of turning San Diego County bright blue.
The county’s Board of Supervisors is another partisan battleground. It galls local Democrats that they have a plurality of the county’s registered voters, but all five county supervisors are Republicans.
Supervisor Ron Roberts is retiring this year, and Democrats are mounting a major drive to flip his district, which includes La Jolla and other coastal neighborhoods.
Nathan Fletcher, a former Republican state assemblyman who ran unsuccessfully for mayor and is now a Democrat, finished first in the June primary.
Fletcher, who is married to Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, will face Republican Bonnie Dumanis, a former judge and prosecutor, in a November runoff.
On paper, it should be an easy win for Fletcher, given a 2-1 Democratic voter registration advantage, but the county’s labor unions, and therefore its Democratic Party, have been wracked by a bitter power struggle of late.
The Democrats’ next target will be Supervisor Kristin Gaspar, who will be up for reelection in 2020. And they pin their hopes on special legislation that a local Democratic assemblyman, Todd Gloria, got passed last year.
Currently, if a county supervisor candidate receives more than 50 percent of the June primary vote, he or she is elected, avoiding a November runoff. If no one gets a June majority, the top two finishers – such as Fletcher and Dumanis this year – duel in November.
Gloria’s Assembly Bill 901 allows San Diego’s county charter to require a top-two runoff in November regardless of what happens in June, not unlike the state top-two system that state Democratic leaders repeatedly denounce.
In San Diego County, though, Democrats see a top-two runoff as an advantage, since November general elections usually have higher voter turnouts. And after the Gloria bill was passed, Democrats and local unions circulated petitions to place such a charter change on next November’s ballot.
That’s when things became difficult.
Michael Vu, San Diego County’s top election official, ruled that the petitions lacked enough signatures to qualify the ballot measure, citing AB 901’s requirement for “10 percent of the qualified electors of the county.”
He interpreted that to mean 10 percent of the county’s 1.7 million registered voters, or 170,000 signatures, while proponents of the measure assumed it would be 10 percent of the total vote in the previous gubernatorial election, or about 67,000 names.
Democrats and unions see Vu’s ruling as a partisan political maneuver to thwart their partisan political maneuver and are now hustling to overturn it. They inserted a brief passage into one of the Legislature’s 26 budget “trailer bills” that would retroactively set the signature threshold at 10 percent of the county’s total vote in the 2014 governor’s election.
It is, of course, another misuse of the budget trailer bill process for non-budgetary purposes, and in this case partisan purposes, but it’s also symptomatic of the struggle for political control of the state’s second largest county.
CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.
