UCI Search Light on OC Influence?

The advisory committee appointed by UC System President Janet Napolitano to help find a replacement for UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake looks light on ties to the larger OC community—business or otherwise. It includes four members of the UC Board of Regents; six UCI faculty members and a staffer; two current students; two alums; a representative from the UCI Foundation; and Napolitano and Bruce Varner, chair of the Regents. A closer look reveals more than initially meets the eye in terms of OC experience: UC Regent Hadi Makarechian no longer lives here but has business and community links; fellow Regent Russell Gould, a principal with California Strategies’ office in Sacramento, is on the board of the Irvine Company; Kurt Busch, one of the alumni, is chief executive of Lantronix, a tech company that ranks No. 86 on our list of the 100 largest publicly traded companies based in OC (see related coverage throughout issue; list starts on page 10); and Hazem Chehabi, who chairs the UCI Foundation, owns Newport Diagnostic Center. Here’s a suggestion for Napolitano in case she wants to bolster the committee’s OC chops: Check the upper ranks of this week’s list of public companies for some context and candidates—and look for the same in our OC 50 issue on May 12 … The Public Companies list includes 18 entries with market caps of $1 billion or more. Seems Opus Bank will top a similar milestone after laying out parameters for an IPO that indicate a market value of about $1.1 billion (see Addendum item, page 24) … Marblehead math: Our Mark Mueller notes that Oaktree Capital is back for seconds along the coast in San Clemente. Oaktree and Lusk Company sold the Marblehead site to SunCal Companies for $195 million back in 2005. Oaktree joined with TPG Capital and Taylor Morrison last week to buy it back for an estimated $205 million. The site was 250 acres in ’05, but a good chunk of land has since gone to Craig Realty Group, which plans an outlet mall. The remaining 195.5 acres come back to Oaktree with improvements toward a high-end residential development. … You’d be hard-pressed to get a better back-to-back picture of OC’s diverse arts than the recent weekend that saw a documentary about the late Huell Howser debut at Chapman U’s campus in Orange on a Saturday afternoon, followed by a Sunday matinee to wrap up Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s recent run at the Segerstrom Center. The documentary by Chapman film professor Jeff Swimmer—titled “A Golden State of Mind: The Storytelling Genius of Huell Howser”—starts with Howser’s down-home Tennessee charm and moves on to give insights on the unique sophistication of the beefy raconteur. Chapman is the home of Howser’s archives, which are the basis of a permanent exhibit on the campus, by the way … The Ailey company took an opposite path to the hearts of a sold-out crowd. The whole production screamed sophistication, from the almost-subversive athleticism of the dance to the elegant extra effects produced by the combination of just-so lighting and just-right fabrics for costumes. Finally, though, these very modern dancers from Manhattan gave the impression that they took the crowd down home … Kudos: To the Auto Club, sponsor of the Howser documentary and exhibit. It even had its cartography department work up a special map of the state that marks locations of various episodes of his shows … Offstage Assessment: No one handles a matinee rush better than Wesley Bishop, manager at Maggiano’s.