Rice Mercado Depot project leads Santa Maria
In keeping with its push towards mixed-use, Santa Maria has plans in the works for a six-acre commercial, residential and manufacturing site at the northwest corner of Depot Street and Morrison Avenue. Developers say the ambitious Rice Depot Mercado project will be a mixed-use hub, drawing pedestrian residential traffic from the densely populated area around Read More →
Recovery may mean the old is new again
Meet the new economy. Same as the old economy. It may just be that the rest of the country looks a lot more like the Tri-Counties as we bid farewell to the Great Recession. By that I mean slow growth, more government, a wider gap between haves and have-nots and a financial system that Read More →
Economists: coastal regions better than inland, but state faces exodus
Inland and coastal California might as well be two different worlds — at least that’s the view of California Lutheran University real estate economist Kirk Lesh. Lesh and the rest of CLU’s forecasting team presented their first economic prophecies for the new year at a March 24 event at the Thousand Oaks campus. Lesh Read More →
Remembering Fess Parker, businessman
The first time I asked Fess Parker to keynote the Business Times’ Spirit of Small Business Awards, his office had a polite reply: “Thanks, but no thanks.” A year later, I tried again. I called his office around noontime and got no farther than an assistant who said she was going to lunch. “Try back Read More →
Cottage Hospital looks local for Goleta design inspiration
When it wanted to bring a more hometown feel to its new Goleta facility, Cottage Hospital brought in a team of local designers. Cottage Hospital broke ground March 11 on its new 52-bed acute care Goleta Valley facility. The 52,000-square-foot, two-story building, which will cost an estimated $103 million, is expected to be complete in Read More →
Water fight puts property rights on trial
Ventura County property owners have won at least a partial victory in their ongoing battle to preserve some measure of rights. Going all the way to the state water board, the Building Industry Association won a re-hearing of new rules that could sharply have increased the cost of compliance with laws governing stormwater — the Read More →
Ten lessons learned from a decade
You might have noticed that the masthead of this edition of the Pacific Coast Business Times reads “Volume 11, No. 1.” The obvious thing to say is that 10 years ago, we began publication of the region’s first weekly business journal. We’re going to acknowledge our born-on date of March 17 with a special anniversary Read More →
