With The Irvine Company giving the cold shoulder to Dennis Rodman’s bid to take over Sloppy Joe’s restaurant in Irvine Spectrum, why doesn’t Rodman turn his attention to The Block at Orange, where a nightspot featuring celebrities, busty waitresses, drag queens and midgets might be an easier sell? Because Irvine’s where the money is, suggests Rodman business manager Doug McAllister: Irvine is “a little higher class” and draws “the people who come in and ask for autographs.” Costa Mesa restaurant consultant and Rodman team advisor Randy Hiatt (Fessel International), was having trouble last week even getting a meeting with the Irvine Co. Hiatt acknowledged a deal’s unlikely unless the giant landlord blesses a lease transfer and amends the lease terms. Hiatt claimed that Rodman’s edgy Newport Beach hangout, Josh Slocum’s, is Orange County’s top-grossing bar per square foot; he described the plan to rename and revamp Sloppy Joe’s as “an interesting entertainment offering with marketing pizzazz that could also add energy to Irvine and entertainment to Irvine Entertainment Center.” But a spokeswoman said the Irvine Co. is leaning toward a “sit-down restaurant” after Sloppy Joe’s vacates the site by next month, not “an avant-garde type of club.” The Insider’s odds: Rodman has a better chance of rejoining the NBA than he does of getting space in Donald Bren’s playground …
.. “UC Irvine may be the greatest asset 20 years from now that Orange County has”: Michael Milken, at the Milken Institute’s “State of the State Conference” last week in the Fairmont Miramar Hotel Santa Monica. Bay Area entrepreneur Zack Rinat (he sold NetDynamics to Sun Microsystems) said, “Silicon Valley now feels to me like Paris in September,all the tourists are gone.” Former guv Jerry Brown on the town he now mayors, Oakland: “We used to be a ghetto but now we’re an emerging market.” Biggest buzzwords at the wonk-studded event: “NGI (next-generation Internet)” and “life sciences” Yet another Dick Riordan sighting in OC. He’s the opening speaker at this Tuesday’s day-long Life Science Innovation Conference at the Beckman Conference Center, UCI. Tonight he is set to hold a fundrasier at the St. Regis OC lawyer Bill Crosby said he’s changed his mind about running for governor and is running for AG instead KOCE’s “Real Orange” pundits are supposed to argue on-camera. Now there’s an off-camera feud, too, stemming from several scathing articles in OC Weekly about businessman Eddie Allen’s troubled finances. Weekly editor Will Swaim boycotted last Friday’s scheduled telecast after fellow panelist Jo Ellen Allen, Eddie Allen’s wife, and KOCE put the kibosh on Swaim’s idea of airing the Allen story. Jim Toledano was tapped to fill in for Swaim, joining Allen, Mark Petracca and EE RR on the program. KOCE news director Mike Taylor said he hopes Swaim will return.
