Don’t blame the construction slowdown on OC’s universities. UCI, Cal State Fullerton and Chapman University combined have been putting $350 million a year into brick and mortar. With a building crane visible outside his office window, UCI Chancellor Michael Drake boasts about another project 14 miles away in Orange: The expanded UCI Medical Center will completed “ahead of schedule” (new target is October/November) and “on budget” (well, counting use of $30 million in contingency funds for a total price tag of $400 million) …
Last month, CSUF biz school dean Anil Puri moved into his new $87.5 million Steven G. Mihaylo Hall with classes to start in the fall …
At Chapman, no patch of unnamed earth is safe from Prez Jim Doti. A new project, the Ambassador George L. Argyros Global Citizens Plaza, will feature a fountain with an 8-foot-diameter globe, “the largest stainless steel sphere in the world.” In various planning stages are a science building, a performing arts center and expansion of the two-year-old Marion Knott Studios (“We’re already out of room”) …
Meet new-century couple Alex and Corrine Taggart of Irvine’s Jamboree Road corridor. They live at Villa Sienna Apartments and work across the street at 2600 Michelson Drive. Alex, a credit manager for GE Capital (new owner of the former Citigroup business, Citi Franchise Finance) goes to the 12th floor. Corrine, P RR’s executive assistant at the OCBJ, is on the ground floor. “It’s a great setup,” she says. “We walk to work almost every day, walk home for lunch, and we save on gas and have a five-minute commute, by foot!” …
Business Journal Tower? Speaking of 2600 Michelson, the Citi signs (recent replacements at that) have come down from the top of the reddish 16-story building heretofore known as Citicorp Tower. As alluded to above, Citi has sold its businesses in the building to GE. For now, that leaves OCBJ’s tree-obscured name on the second-floor as the only sign on the marquee building …
The Forum for Corporate Directors hosts a breakfast panel Wednesday with Apria Healthcare Group CEO and dealmaker Larry Higby, Newport Corp. CEO Robert Phillippy and Fleetwood Enterprises director Margaret Dano. Info at fcdoc.org …
It was almost like old times,a couple of hundred loyalists enjoying drinks and cigars at the Balboa Bay Club, conservative stalwart Bruce Herschensohn signing books and Tom Fuentes at the center of it all. The event launched Fuentes’ re-election campaign for trustee of the South Orange County Community College District, job enough these days for the once-powerful chairman of OC’s Republican Party. The old lion held court, told stories, trumpeted the college district’s fiscal conservatism and blamed the GOP’s woes on power brokers who value “money” more than “people” or “ideas.” But a slowed Fuentes was gracious, and more philosophical than combative. He did not partake of the libations, a small price to pay, he said, for his new liver: An encounter with cancer “makes you realize what’s really important.”
