The Insider hears SFX may build an Anaheim concert venue

There’s buzz that SFX Entertainment is planning to build a 3,000-seat theater, mainly for pop concerts, in the Civic Center area of Anaheim. The big events promoter operates 120 entertainment venues around the country, including Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine Gordon Roth won’t have as far to travel anymore for the traditional two-on-two family holiday basketball game. That’s because he’s finally joined three of his Iowa-raised brothers in Southern California. Gordon is selling his interest in the 30-person Des Moines accounting firm he founded, Roth & Co., to become CFO of brother Byron’s 200-person Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach. Gordon replaces Dawn Cassulo, who earlier decided to leave the firm. Byron, who turns 38 in November, had been trying to recruit Gordon, 46, for some time. Gordon will also be seeing more of brothers Duane, 49, and Ted, 48, the duo that runs Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., a San Diego public company with a market cap of close to $800 million. Before they became captains of industry, the four Roth boys were star high school athletes and college football players. “We’re very competitive,” said Gordon, adding that he was the fastest. Gordon said he sees no problem working for a younger brother he used to wail on: “There’s respect, and I’m a partner, too.” Gordon’s main reasons for moving: Proximity to his brothers, the weather and the business activity, both in Southern California and at RCP. But he and wife Tami still have family and friends in Iowa, so they’ll go back for visits. Interesting fact: Gordon is part owner in the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League and a friend of Kurt Warner, the team’s former quarterback who has gone on to NFL fame. “I handed Kurt Warner his first professional paycheck.” Another interesting fact: There’s a fifth Roth brother, Courtney, 32, who has Down’s syndrome. “He’s self-supporting. He’s got an apartment by himself,” Gordon said proudly. “He calls himself a manager. He washes dishes at a restaurant in Iowa City. Courtney is definitely the greatest success story of the whole works. We’ll have to get him out here somehow” OC supe Todd Spitzer has sold his home in Brea and moved to East Orange,a better launching pad for a possible legislative run Broadcom’s Henry “Nick” Nicholas got a lot of media mileage last year out of his attempt to buy the Anaheim Angels, but he recently told a national gathering of business journalists in Irvine that negotiations actually were aborted after just a week and a half. Nicholas said his interest in the Angels was strictly business, to use ballgames as a vehicle for developing interactive programming. “I really hate baseball,” Nicholas said. “If it were any slower, it would be farming.”