Life after Larry: Word around Irvine says longtime vendors of services to the city—including Great Park consultant Forde & Mollrich—are on thin ice now that Larry Agran has lost his leverage. Agran, who fell to Steven Choi in the race for mayor last week, remains a member of the City Council but now is on the losing end of a 3-2 split. Stay tuned—Irvine’s politics are nothing if not fluid … Chapman University in Orange will recognize President Jim Doti’s 38-year body of work to put the school on the map by putting his name and his wife’s—a professor at the school with several books on economics to her credit—on a new classroom building. The $80 million project will be christened James L. and Lynne P. Doti Hall …
Doti is particularly proud that it sits across from Roosevelt Hall—named not for Teddy or Franklin but James, one of Franklin’s sons. No post-election political read there—the younger Roosevelt was a strong supporter of Chapman and a personal friend of Doti’s …
Doti brought hefty academic credentials from the economics department at the University of Chicago when he came to Chapman in 1974. He added a remarkable record of entrepreneurship that continues. Where did he get his entrepreneurial streak? Start with his mother, a hat maker who designed and made her own brand, Carmelina’s Creations, back in Chicago. No political read here, either, but her entrepreneurial instincts came in handy after hatless JFK became president and fascinated the nation, leading lots of men to doff their caps for good. She managed to get through that jolt to her market as a working mom, too, making time in her small, home-based shop to talk about any problems and answer any questions her son might have. Those talks became a basis of a personal entrepreneurial effort by her son—a second children’s book Doti has authored, Jimmy Finds His Voice, which will be published in early 2013 by Jobberwocky Press …
Doti has some company among the literati, which now includes hedge fund-manager-turned-author Chuck Martin and his wife Twyla, who recently hosted a dinner party at their Emerald Bay home for Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Robert Massie. The OC Literary Society arranged a Southern California tour for Massie, whose most recent work is a bio of Catherine the Great. The group kicked it off with a Russian-themed dinner where a small group of VIPs could consider the woman of history featured in Massie’s book alongside the fictional Nadia, a Russsian émigré who’s the main character in Martin’s recently published thriller Provocateur …
Lots of car news in OC, with Cypress-based Mitsubishi bringing an exec out of its Tokyo bullpen to oversee its struggling U.S. operations and Brea-based Suzuki deciding to stop selling cars here (see related story, page 1). No car troubles for Miss California Leah Cecil, who will cruise through her reign in a Volkwagen Passat TDI from Volkswagen of Garden Grove in her hometown. It is billed as having a clean diesel engine that gets 43 miles to the gallon and can range 795 miles on a tank. That ought to more than cover Cecil’s drive to Las Vegas, where she’ll represent California in the Miss America pageant in January.
