A good week for OC, and corporate relocations.
Epson America’s headquarters will move to Los Alamitos next year, adding one more name to the area’s cluster of printers, scanners and related product-makers (see story, this page).
About 600 workers will be making the move to the city, and Epson said another 100 hires are possible going forward.
Elsewhere in OC, our Katie Murar says real estate chatter is picking up on PepsiCo.’s relocation of some Western U.S. operations to the area, with the potential of 200 or so high-level jobs coming to the county as part of a corporate restructuring announced a month ago.
The Purchase, N.Y-based beverage giant recently began advertising for a few of those positions in Irvine, but don’t expect the firm to locate those employees at a typical airport office; Pepsi’s expected to put its workers at an area WeWork location, according to sources.
It’s the latest sign that coworking isn’t just for startups—see our expanded coverage on shared-space operators throughout this issue.
A good portion of our reader feedback takes the form of one of two topics: questions on job leads, and questions on Jim Doti.
We’ve got both covered in this column, and can report that Chapman University’s president emeritus is recovering well from his kidney donation procedure two weeks ago, and last Thursday “even took a few tentative running steps.”
“My recipient is doing fantastic,” said the 72-year-old, who planned the donation without having a specific recipient in mind. “Evidently, my old kidney likes its new younger body.”
Doti’s still working too; his back-page Leader Board column written with Fadel Lawandy this issue suggests a better-than-expected year for local home sales.
The Insider quipped last December on Paul Musco having a heart of palladium, noting the rising price for the precious metal that the longtime area benefactor’s Gemini Industries reclaims as part of its operations.
Still true, but Musco’s giving remains gold-based, it seems, as evidenced by the not one, but two, kilogram bars he donated for auction at last week’s Let’s Be Frank About Cancer gala in Irvine, an event that raised about $1.2 million for City of Hope (see story, page 11), or nearly $2,000 per attendee.
Each of Musco’s bars went for around $42,000, in line with recent prices for gold, and were among the showstoppers of the night for the live auction; a number of attendees/amateur commodities traders were frantically checking gold prices online during the process.
A kilogram of palladium now goes for a little under $45,000. Maybe next year.
The Hotel Irvine event featured more than its share of notable biz executives—Milan Panic, James “Jimmy P” Peterson, Jim Mazzo and Mobilitie’s Christos Karmis, among others.
It also included a heartfelt speech from FivePoint Chief Executive Emile Haddad, whose firm is bringing a new City of Hope campus to Irvine. It was one of the two best speeches from a Haddad family member; wife, Dina, introduced the developer who along with Hazem Chehabi was honored at the black-tie event.
