Arts
The Pacific Symphony moved into a new headquarters office in Irvine. The Charlie and Ling Zhang Musical Arts & Education Center is on Fitch Avenue off MacArthur Boulevard and is shared with Arts Orange County and the new Orange County Music & Dance. The symphony occupies 15,000 square feet, over 50% more than it had at its old location.
Automotive
The first batch of Karma Automotive LLC’s Revero luxury plug-in hybrid vehicles is on its way to 10 dealer showrooms in the U.S. and Canada. The Costa Mesa-based automaker launched the $130,000 vehicle in September with about 80 orders on the books. The Revero is powered by electricity, gas and solar energy and can hit 60 miles per hour in 5.4 seconds.
Education
Chapman University will get a $1 million gift from the Illinois-based Give Something Back Foundation Inc. The money will help provide four-year scholarships for students who have faced extreme hardship, especially those who have experienced the incarceration or loss of a parent or who’ve spent time in foster care, according to the philanthropic organization.
The Orange County chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association will give University of California-Irvine professor Matthew Inlay $150,000 over three years for research “critical to developing more-effective strategies for understanding and treating” the disease, the association said. The local chapter of the Chicago-based national association is in Orange; a separate Alzheimer’s organization not affiliated with the other two groups is based in Irvine. Inlay is an assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UCI.
Healthcare
A mistrial was declared May 12 in the insider trading case against Jim Mazzo, global president of ophthalmic devices at Carl Zeiss Meditec AG in Germany, while two others—former Angels player Doug DeCinces and friend David Parker—were found guilty of multiple charges, the U.S. Department of Justice said. A mistrial was declared in Mazzo’s case after the jury deadlocked on all of the charges against him. The former chairman and chief executive of medical device and eye care company Advanced Medical Optics in Santa Ana was indicted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2014. The case, initially filed in 2012, alleged that he provided nonpublic information to his Laguna Beach neighbor, DeCinces, about the impending merger between Abbott Laboratories in Chicago and Advanced Medical Optics in 2008.
Tourism
Orange County Visitors Association worked in the Middle East in March and plans new efforts in Mexico, through a California tourism team’s visit to tell business travelers and tourists they’re welcome here. The efforts come amid political turmoil about whether visitors from those regions should come to the U.S. “People are anxious,” in those areas, said OCVA Chief Executive Ed Fuller. “We’re meeting with them and saying, please come.”
