Other items of interest Orange County Business Journal
ECONOMY
Orange County’s unemployment rate fell slightly last month with the addition of 14,300 nonfarm jobs across different industries. It was the second month in a row of gains here, following September’s pickup of 5,700 jobs. The county saw a cutback of 4,600 jobs in August. The October total came to 20,400 more jobs compared with a year earlier, a rise of 1.5%. The county now has a total of about 1.39 million jobs. The recent gain cut the unemployment rate to 8.5% in October from 8.6% in September and 9.3% a year earlier, according to the state Employment Development Department. Government hiring saw the biggest jump last month, with 6,800 positions added. Professional and business services gained 3,100 jobs last month, while educational and health services had 2,000 new positions. Summer’s end saw leisure and hospitality cut 500 jobs, marking the largest monthly decline. On a nationwide basis, unemployment dropped to 8.5% in October from 8.8% in September. The statewide unemployment rate for October was 11.2%, down from 11.4% in September. Unemployment declined to 8.5% nationally from 8.8% in September.
RETAIL
Garden Grove-based Linder’s Furniture plans going-out-of-business sales at its 10 stores and Legacy Furniture showroom in Rancho Mirage. OC operations of the 30-year-old chain include stores in Laguna Hills, Fullerton and Westminster. The chain is being shut via an assignment for benefit of creditors, an alternative to bankruptcy liquidation.
Santa Ana-based Wahoo’s Fish Taco has opened a full-service bar in its Fashion Island restaurant in Newport Beach. It plans another at its Irvine Spectrum restaurant, among several others throughout California. Only the chain’s two Texas restaurants and one in Hawaii offered alcoholic beverages previously.
REAL ESTATE
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kwan named the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange the winner in bidding for the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral Ministries’ property in Garden Grove. The diocese will pay $57.5 million for the 40-acre campus, where it plans to establish a new cathedral of its own. Chapman University in Orange had offered $59 million. Both bidders had agreed to lease some buildings on the campus to Crystal Cathedral Ministries for several years. The diocese also offered one of its nearby parish churches as a future home for Crystal Cathedral Ministries.
Aliso Viejo-based QLogic Corp. plans to repurchase up to $200 million worth of its shares, the latest in a string of stock buybacks by the maker of high-speed storage network systems.
TRANSPORTATION
Southwest Airlines plans to begin service between John Wayne Airport and two cities in Mexico in June through recently acquired AirTran subsidiary. The announcement came at an event to unveil JWA’s newly opened Terminal C. Southwest’s recently acquired Air Tran unit plans to offer regular service on routes to Mexico City and Cabo San Lucas from JWA, subject to regulatory approval. The Orange County Board of Supervisors recently approved incentives for service to Mexico, including a $300,000 rent credit for airlines.
HEALTHCARE
Orange-based St. Joseph Health System named Kenneth McFarland chief executive of Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, succeeding Peter Bastone. McFarland has been interim chief executive since May and an executive with the hospital since 1998. McFarland played an instrumental role in the hospital’s 2009 buy of the former South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach.
OTHER NEWS
The Orange County Fair Board reversed an earlier decision to evict Tel Phil Enterprises, which has operated a swap meet at the 150-acre property in Costa Mesa for 42 years. The initial move against Tel Phil’s Orange County Market Place followed months of back-and-forth on the fees Tel Phil pays to use a portion of the fairgrounds as well as available dates for its swap meet. The reversal followed ongoing negotiations. Tel Phil Enterprises got a cut in the minimum rent it pays in 2009, a drop to $2 million annually from $3.5 million. It remained unclear whether new terms will be negotiated now that Tel Phil is set to remain a tenant.
ECONOMIC INDICATOR
UP: Pending sales of homes in Orange County in October, with 244 deals in escrow, an increase of 8% from a year earlier, according to ReportsOnHousing.com. The housing tracker also reported that the average time on the market for homes here dropped to about three-and-a-half months from just more than four months.
