August 21, 2025

		

Editorial Department


| Monday, December 21st, 2009

Select slashes debt with public option

Top Stories

In the region’s second major going-public transaction this year, Santa Barbara-based Select Staffing has agreed to a deal that would let it pay off $200 million in debt and become listed on a major stock exchange. With $1.4 billion in revenue in 2008, Select, a temporary staffing services firm, is the largest privately held company Read More →

| Monday, December 21st, 2009

Ventura real estate firm sets sights on the Lone Star State

Columns

For the first time in eight years, Dick Fausset’s Ventura real estate investment company is buying. Back in the 1990s, Fausset Neely Inc. went on an acquisition spree, buying up more than 2.86 million square feet of commercial property in California, Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. But in 2001, Fausset stopped buying and started selling. “In Read More →

| Monday, December 21st, 2009

Investors wait for answers

Opinion

Now that Don Lukens has been arrested in Chicago, maybe Ventura and Santa Barbara county investors will learn what happened to their money. Millions of dollars are still missing from failed investment programs run by Lukens, who disappeared amid a flurry of law enforcement activity. Much of the reporting on the Lukens affair was reported Read More →

| Monday, December 21st, 2009

No restaurant blues at EP Koberl

Features

The restaurant business is a notoriously tough one to succeed in, but Erich and Patricia Koberl must have had a secret recipe when they struck out on their own almost five years ago. EP Koberl at Blue, a stylish little restaurant nestled in the corner of the historic J.P. Andrews Building in downtown San Luis Read More →

| Monday, December 21st, 2009

Give small businesses a few tools

Columns

It’s bad enough that regulators have basically forced our community banks to redline small businesses and deprive them of capital at a time when it’s most needed. Now comes word that staff have been let go at Small Business Development Centers, which provide technical assistance to operating ventures in Ventura and Santa Barbara centers, which Read More →

| Monday, December 21st, 2009

In our thoughts

Opinion

We’ll take a few sentences to recognize Ugo Melchiori, founder of Melchiori Construction Co., and Roger Heroux, the retired head of the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department. Just before press time, we learned that Melchiori, patriarch of a construction company that’s been highly successful on the South Coast, passed away after a long illness. Read More →

| Monday, December 21st, 2009

Runoff rules rile builders

Top Stories

New storm water rules taking shape in Ventura County have public and private builders concerned that costs for routine projects could go way up and that some developments — such as large factories or warehouses — wouldn’t be feasible at all. The big change in the rules is that builders will have to deal with Read More →