25-year view: Putting it all in perspective
Twenty-five years ago, a recently retired New York banker stopped by a cabin in New Hampshire for a chat with a few friends. I was fortunate enough to have been present that day — as a relatively new reporter for a medium-sized newspaper in Massachusetts, I got a glimpse behind the scenes on Wall Street. Read More →
Business tax violates Sol
First, a disclosure. My late father, Sol Dubroff, spent much of his career as a tax systems architect, working for the U.S. Treasury and later for the IMF and other development agencies. He absolutely detested the value added tax, or VAT. He accepted the fact that taxes are the price we pay for liberty and Read More →
Foundation puts cash to work in soft commercial real estate market
In a typical week, I get about a dozen real estate deals in my inbox. Most of them are pretty forgettable, and some are only buzzworthy because, well … there’s nothing else to buzz about. Leases are few and sales are far between. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard from Ron Gallo, Read More →
How to turns heads around here: Blue building, green construction
Joe Campanelli has been doing construction in Santa Barbara for more than 30 years, but suddenly his phone has been ringing off the hook. When he slapped a splash of bright blue on his new project, the Gateway Building on Haley Street, people took notice. “They all want to know how I got this Read More →
A CSU turf war over an MBA program
Dick Rush is not a fan of Cal Poly’s plan to study the possibility of setting up an MBA program in or around Santa Barbara. Rush, president of California State University Channel Islands, has put a lot of time and fundraising muscle behind the Martin V. Smith School of Business. He’s been wooing donors and Read More →
San Luis Obispo holds its own in commercial real estate market
While San Luis Obispo was busy weighing the pros and cons of a possible Target or an Ernie Dalidio development, Lee & Associates released its commercial real estate update, which showed that vacancy is actually down 33 percent from a year ago. The commercial vacancy rate for San Luis Obispo County is relatively small at Read More →
South Coast needs a path for recovery
Up until the crash in the global financial markets last September, it looked like the South Coast region of the Tri-Counties would escape the recession largely unscathed. That turns out not to have been the case. And now the stretch of coast from Carpinteria to Goleta is in danger of losing its status as Read More →
