Word around the county line has the Orange County Register thinking about starting a daily—Monday-through-Friday, anyway—in Long Beach. Register Editor Ken Brusic acknowledges the idea is under discussion but says there’s been no final decision. A move into Long Beach would take on the Press-Telegram, a property of MediaNews Group, which muddled through an on-again-off-again negotiation to buy the OC paper before Aaron Kushner and his 2100 Trust took the leap last year. Some observers see the P-T as soft on local ties, now that it’s become one of nine dailies in MediaNews Group’s Southern California lineup, which includes the LA Daily News and papers in the South Bay, San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire. We’ll see if Kushner and crew view that as an opening for their more-is-more approach—a strategy that has the Register’s printing press humming with new sections and beefed-up weeklies, even as the jury remains out on whether the model is profitable …
Anyone know why Newport Coast Drive remains a dead spot for cellphones? Gary Jabara says there’s no good reason, especially since his Mobilitie LLC has spent four years and about a million bucks trying to get a cell service tower approved for placement across from Sage Hill School. The newly minted member of the Business Journal’s OC 50—which tallies the most influential residents in these parts—says his company hit all the marks on working with the community in a set radius around the site. Now, he says, it’s being stifled by Newport Beach Mayor Keith Curry, who has dismissed staff recommendations and ordered Mobilitie to go above and beyond legal requirements to work with some homeowners up the hill who have objections. Jabara says Curry is putting vanity over public safety when it comes to blocking the cellphone service on Newport Coast Drive. Stay tuned on this one—Jabara also is a recent addition to our OC’s Wealthiest list, and the Insider is guessing he’s the type to put some dough into a political campaign if he gets fired up …
Here’s the latest example that downtown Santa Ana’s shift toward the creative class has legs: Collider LLC, a new marketing agency that will soon set up shop on Fourth Street under Draftfcb vets Ken Muench and Jeff Fox (see related story, page 1). The veteran agency execs aren’t the only ones helping the area get beyond the typical chic bars and restaurants and hipster retailers that typically come with a first wave of gentrification. A recent walk down Fourth Street found a grinning construction worker who said there’s plenty of work on renovations of office space above the ground-floor retail shops. Word has it that the area has become a popular location for digital marketing firms, and there are even a couple of apparel wholesale showrooms that have set up shop there …
Irvine-startup Oculus VR Inc.’s recent commemoration of computer graphics engineer and founding member Andrew Reisse was particularly fitting for a virtual reality headset maker. Reisse, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident this month, was memorialized in a plaque users came upon as they navigated through a headset demo at the E3 video gaming conference in Los Angeles last week.
