I expected to write a portion of this column next to the beach in Maui, in-between sips of a cold beverage, while celebrating some family milestones. The local tie-in for the item was likely to be the Sunstone Hotel Investors property we were to stay at, and the new AC by Marriott Maui Wailea being built by Bob Olson up the street.
Then the world happened, the trip postponed, and we stayed home.
There’s plenty of stories like that this week. There are also business stories to report, and our editorial team is working hard to keep readers on top of what OC companies of all types, and their execs, are doing to manage the current crisis. You’ll find plenty of those reports in this issue, alongside our normal coverage (and this week’s voluminous Giving Guide supplement), extensive coverage on the ocbj.com website and our daily email updates.
If you are an area exec with an interesting story to tell about your own current operations, let us know. We’re open for business.
Throughout the chaos, life still goes on, notes our Katie Murar.
Tyler Stanaland, a fifth-generation luxury broker who’s part of Laguna Beach-based Stanaland Group (under the Villa Real Estate umbrella), recently wed actress Brittany Snow, known for her part in the “Pitch Perfect” trilogy.
John Stanaland, the groom’s father, owner of the namesake company, and a cover star for our March 9 Top Home Sales print edition of the Business Journal, told Murar that the private Malibu ceremony had a shortened guest list due to COVID-19, but it didn’t damper the outdoor event. “It was a great day. We are all very excited,” he said.
Kari Hamanaka’s front-page story covers the myriad ways area retailers, restaurants, mall owners and automakers are adapting to recent changes.
Count Fashion Island’s Red O Restaurant and head chef Rick Bayless among those keeping a sense of humor amid a tough environment. An email ad on Thursday touting the restaurant’s curbside pickup family meal pack for four (costing $55) notes the fiesta pack comes with “two rolls of toilet paper with every order.”
The COVID-19 emergency hasn’t provided many upsides. But you can add increased training time for Chapman University President Emeritus Jim Doti and his new running buddy among them.
It’s been a year since the Insider first reported on Doti’s latest gift to the community: a donation of one of his kidneys to a then-stranger.
Both giver and receiver are doing well health-wise. So well, in fact, that they’d planned a race together at this month’s SoCal Marathon that runs from Yorba Linda to Huntington Beach.
“My transplant recipient, Jose Tolento, and I were planning to run it next Saturday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of our transplant at UCI Hospital,” Doti said a week ago. “The neat thing is that he’s never run long distance before. But he figured that since he now has a ‘runners kidney’ he can do it.”
Tolento and his daughter-in-law, Adriana Morales, started training for it six months ago.
“They were all set to go,” until the race, scheduled for the 21st, was postponed.
A celebratory half-marathon in May will have to do for the duo, until the time for a rescheduled 26-miler arrives, Doti said.
