Put Carpinteria down as one city that’s not tossing in the towel. The city of 16,000 boasts one of the oldest assets in the history of real estate — a prime location. Situated roughly halfway between Santa Barbara and Ventura — and in close proximity to office parks in Goleta, Oxnard and Camarillo — it [...]
With economic forecasting guru Bill Watkins and his team leaving the University of California, Santa Barbara, to join California Lutheran University’s business school, the Thousand Oaks campus gets instant name recognition and a potentially powerful magnet for fundraising. And Ventura County business leaders will face a tough choice – keep their sponsorship dollars flowing toward [...]
Oil prices have crashed and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has clamped down on new drilling within federal lands and waters, but one firm has hit a gusher using a new approach to a decades-old oil lease in Oxnard. Tri-Valley Corp. has drilled seven wells at its Pleasant Valley site in Oxnard, and so far [...]
Morris & Casale Advertising, Weiser Creative Group and BBM&D Strategic Branding were the top winners in the 2009 ADDY Awards Coastal California competition recently held by the American Advertising Federation. The ADDYs recognize advertising excellence for work that appeared last year in all kinds of media, including print, radio and television, online content, posters, brochures, [...]
Former Vice President Al Gore and an array of leaders from around the world will spend March 4 to 6 at Goleta’s Bacara Resort & Spa discussing the crossover between business and the environment. Hosted by the Wall Street Journal, the second annual ECO:nomics conference will bring together an international list of who’s who in [...]
Tough times call on entrepreneurs to get inventive and do something a little different to win customers’ dollars. And two tri-county businesses are doing just that. In Santa Barbara, Live Culture plans to serve up a combination of wine, frozen yogurt and live music. SLO County Sitters in San Luis Obispo has connected parents with [...]
Sometimes the owner is the company. Such was apparently the case with the Wine Cask, a popular Santa Barbara watering hole and wine shop that closed abruptly in mid-February. Owner Doug Margerum sold the operation a year or so ago and the new owners tried hard. But with the down economy and without Doug’s magic, [...]
In a dramatic speech on Feb. 24, President Barack Obama vowed to lead America’s economy back to health and prosperity. In doing so, he laid down a considerable challenge to local elected officials, community and business leaders in the tri-county region. That challenge boils down to this: creating a new brand for the Highway 101 [...]
Even though the flurry of foreclosures in the past few months has driven home prices down and made owning a home a realistic dream, recent data suggests that one county’s buyers are still looking at a very unaffordable market. According to findings from the California Association of Realtors, San Luis Obispo County was the least [...]
Mayor Richard Riordan built the modern Los Angeles. Supervisor Brooks Firestone kept Santa Barbara County from splitting. Gov. Ronald Reagan created the economic foundation for the Silicon Valley boom. What ever happened to achievement-driven Republicans? If you ask state Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, the GOP in the Golden State is locked in a battle [...]
It’s all smiles and sauvignon in Happy Canyon’s vineyards
Towbes Group grabs Goleta with Groupon-like deals at retailers
Social-media IPOs could launch Golden State sustainability fund
Ventura County brokers hold out ’til 2013 for real recovery
Name changes and new faces at SLO and Oxnard law firms
From apartments to industrial spaces, deals close in the region