Automotive
Karma Automotive LLC in Costa Mesa said its distribution strategy for the new Revero car will include 10 independent dealers in the U.S. and Canada and a company-owned “brand-experience center” in Orange County. The luxury electric vehicle goes on sale next month for more than $100,000. The OC Karma-owned store location, one of more to come, wasn’t immediately released. Karma’s parent company, Wanxiang Group Corp., meanwhile, applied for an environmental permit to make electric cars in China, according to Bloomberg.
Education
New York City-based General Assembly, a global education company, announced it will open a campus in Irvine. It offers classes in person and online in design, technology, marketing and data. The location and opening date for the Irvine campus hadn’t been finalized.
University of California-Irvine economics and public policy professor Peter Navarro is a member of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s economic advisory team, according to news reports. He told the Orange County Register that he’s analyzing economic data for the campaign and that he attended the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Healthcare
Innovation Institute in La Palma will raise $150 million to invest in early-stage healthcare companies and bought TriStar Health Partners LLC in Nashville to be the fund investment manager. Institute CEO Joe Randolph said his group will provide seed money. The institute is a for-profit limited liability company owned by five nonprofit health systems.
Allergan Plc plans to buy ForSight Vision5 for $95 million and milestone payments. The company that formerly was called Allergan Inc. maintains an eye care and aesthetics medicine hub in Irvine. Menlo Park-based ForSight is developing a device called the Bimatoprost Ring that can be inserted under the eyelids to deliver glaucoma-treatment medicine and replace the need for patients to regularly refill prescriptions. It was founded in 2011.
Hospitality
Hotel Menage in Anaheim plans to rebrand as a Four Points by Sheraton, industry sources said. The plan includes renovations of its 255 rooms that are scheduled to begin in the fall and continue into early 2017. La Casa Anaheim Resort LLC, an affiliate of Casa Resorts Inc. in Laguna Beach, sold the Menage last August to Taiwan investor Kitty Lo for $34.2 million.
Real Estate
CareTrust REIT Inc. in San Clemente invested $2.2 million in a company that’s developing a healthcare facility CareTrust plans to own. It usually buys existing properties. This is the first of three investment deals with Eagle, Idaho-based Cascadia Healthcare LLC, the tenant of CareTrust’s 152-bed Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Nampa, Idaho. The companies will build a 99-bed facility that CareTrust can buy after it opens and that Cascadia will run under the existing master lease.
Retail
Minneapolis-based Target Corp. selected Irvine Co.’s University Center near the University of California-Irvine as one of four college campus-area locations where it will open a “flexible-format” store, the first such store in OC. The 20,000-square-foot space is about half the size of an average Target store.
Tourism
Orange County is the No. 3 large city destination in the U.S., bested only by Los Angeles and New York City, in a national assessment by Resonance Consultancy Ltd. in New York, which crunched comments from 270 million online postings—largely on the travel website TripAdvisor and a section of consumer ratings provider Yelp—and information from the U.S. Dept. of Commerce. It ranked cities overall based on culture, sightseeing, entertainment, sports, culinary offerings and lodging, and OC cracked the top 10 in four of the six categories.
Other
Emerald Expositions LLC in San Juan Capistrano acquired two trade shows from founder Shannon Leggett on undisclosed terms. Swim Collective, a swimwear event created in 2010, is held twice a year in Huntington Beach. Active Collective, launched in 2014, focuses on exercise apparel and loungewear and follows Swim Collective at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort. The shows attract most major swimwear manufacturers and brands.
