Enjoy our annual Best Places to Work issue—lists and features on top two in small, medium and large groups. Thank you, contributing writer Kim Haman. There are a number of young businesses—Corient Capital Partners, 2015; expanded OC operations of Denver-based SendGrid, 2014; there are also venerables like fifth-generation Whittier Trust in Costa Mesa, family-owned family office that shares a credo with the young guns: Never forget your most valuable assets walk out the door every night.
Made in OC is still a thing, fifth in the U.S. in manufacturing jobs—despite high costs, taxes and a thicket of regulations, some contrary to federal law, like the 95% domestic-content rule to be labeled “Made in the USA.” And now this—climate-change lawsuits filed by cities and counties. At a forum in Irvine last week sponsored by National Assoc. of Manufacturers, La Habra Mayor Tim Shaw said the suits are the latest rub pushing firms to expand out of state. Huntington Beach Mayor Mike Posey likened the lawsuits to old-fashioned legal “shakedowns.” Irvine Mayor Don Wagner said cities aren’t qualified to sue over climate change. Fourteen such lawsuits filed by cities and counties in the U.S., eight in the Golden State.
TAPS Fish House and Brewery restaurateur Joe Manzella isn’t risk averse. Downtown Brea wasn’t a thing till Taps anchored it in 1999. Three Taps and a Catch in, Manzella’s going for the Full Brewery—opening TAPS Brewery and Barrel Room in Tustin. Tasting room will look like a brewery—with plans to ramp up to 25,000 barrels/year. Owner suggests amber …
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Loreen Gilbert told me in early March. Stock-market indexes were at all-time highs, and P/E ratios were higher; yield curve flattening and trade-war saber-rattling. But Gilbert, who followed a long stint at Fidelity in the Midwest by opening advisory WealthWise Financial Services 21 years ago in Laguna Beach, wasn’t sending clients mattresses. “I always tell (them) market cycles go longer and further that anyone expects—upside and downside.”
Five months and another 4% on the frothy S&P 500 later, Gilbert is cautiously correct. Her firm advises clients in 21 states. Her secret: “I listen.”
More good news for the ecosystem (see story on VC funding on Startups & Innovations page 16) UC-Irvine broke ground on $120 million Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Building last week, key gift $30 million from Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli. Opens 2020. As does Chapman’s Fowler School of Engineering. Its Keck Center for Science and Engineering opens this fall.
Marriott’s Hotels, div. of Marriott Int’l (Nasdaq: MAR) world’s largest hotel operator and owner continues to be an incubator for innovation; the hotelier like some of its competitors owns an innovation center. The latest is an “Alexa from your bed.” The Alexa for Hospitality commands range from shut the blinds to lower the thermostat to get me the concierge…newly-opened, R.D. Olson-built, Irvine Marriott Spectrum one of two test markets, joint venture with Amazon … last year, Marriott Irvine hotel debuted a ”scrawling in the shower” technology, where guests’ best ideas doodled in steam are sent to their email accounts. Hotelier calls that the “Splash of Brilliance Shower.”
