Hopes of landing an NBA franchise in Anaheim appear to be on hiatus, but OC will be well represented in the league’s upcoming championship series. Oklahoma City Thunder coach Scott Brooks, who spends off-season time in Corona del Mar, also is a Big Canyon member and a graduate of UCI. He transferred to Irvine from San Joaquin Delta College for his last two years of school, and had an 11-year career as an NBA journeyman—with a couple of stops in the minors—before hitting it big as a coach …
Rafer Johnson doesn’t live here, but he warmed up a chilly Newport Beach evening with a recent visit. The UCLA decathlon legend—winner of the 1960 Olympic gold medal and torch bearer for the 1984 games in Los Angeles—took part in OC’s annual Bruin Bash at the Belcourt home of Barry Saywitz, a UCLA grad and head of Newport Beach real estate brokerage Saywitz Co. The event benefits the school’s Wooden Athletic Fund. Bruins’ hoops coach Ben Howland was in good spirits amid chatter about his 2012 recruiting class, said to include two of the top five high school prospects. Other notables: former NBAers Jamaal Wilkes and Kiki Vanderweghe, and volleyball standout Sinjin Smith …
Don’t know if Smith is bragging about UCLA’s recent hire of UCLA alum John Speraw as volleyball coach. Speraw will leave UCI for Westwood after winning three national titles in 10 years here, including this year’s …
A late injury means we’ll never know whether I’ll Have Another—the out-of-nowhere thoroughbred that’s owned by Paul Reddam of CashCall in Anaheim—would have delivered bragging rights on the Triple Crown to OC. Here’s another horse story from CHOC’s Kimberly Cripe, who delivered the keynote address to a record crowd at the Business Journal’s Women in Business Awards last week (story, page 10; profiles of winners coming in next week’s issue). Cripe wove plenty of humor in a talk about learning lessons that prepared her for business while tending to a retired race horse named Chewy Bee during her teen years. The first lesson came on due diligence—after the horse chewed through the wooden door of its stall during its first night in Cripe’s care: “Now I knew why she had such an odd name for a race horse” …
You can hardly mention Plaza Tower in Costa Mesa without architect Cesar Pelli’s name coming up. Richard Keating, architect of The Michelson tower in Irvine, has been getting similar plaudits for his work on that 19-story Park Place office, especially now that the building is on the sales block and expected to go for more than $250 million. “I am quite pleased with the recognition and praise that I get relatively often,” Keating told our Mark Mueller by email. Jacobs Engineering Group, which acquired Keating’s firm in 2009, recently shifted its OC operations into the Michelson …
It was billed as a “60 at 60” party but closer to 100 Pacific Symphony supporters and friends showed up at Pelican Hill Resort last weekend to help Carl St. Clair celebrate his 60th birthday …
Can it be? SoCal Insider host, OC Insider predecessor and contributor, and OCBJ Executive Editor Rick Reiff also made 60.
