Speeding Up the ER - Mountain View Calabasas | Ben Salem

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SAN FERNANDOVALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL
LOS ANGELES • GLENDALE • SANTA CLARITA • BURBANK • CONEJO VALLEY • SIMI VALLEY • SAN FERNANDO • CALABASAS • AGOURA HILLS • ANTELOPE VALLEY
THE
Volume 19, Number 9
COMMUNITY
OF
BUSINESS
TM
May 5 - 18, 2014 • $4.00
Home Tract
Gets OnTrack
Up
Front
RESIDENTIAL: Simi subdivision
closest yet to contaminated lab.
By ELLIOT GOLAN Staff Reporter
Grading has restarted on a nearly 1,600acre Simi Valley subdivision after a decade of
controversy over its proximity to the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
Runkle Ranch would total more than 325 single-family homes and 138 senior condos when
completed, as well as 1,100 acres of open space.
Nestled in the Simi Hills, with views that
reach across the city, it would seem like a
dream project for the development partnership
of L.A. builder KB Home and Lennar Homes,
a unit of Lennar Corp. of Miami. But it has
taken years to move forward given its position
Can Jerry
Shevick make
parting with
Fido easier?
PAGE 4
Drive By: Los Robles Hospital billboard alongside Ventura (101) Freeway in the Conejo Valley.
Sales are
brighter at Andy
Sreden’s PQL
Inc. PAGE 5
LIST
Speeding Up the ER
Local hospitals hawk faster services via text, apps
By JOEL RUSSELL Staff Writer
T
Money
management
firms. PAGE 13
MAIL TO:
rue or not, emergency rooms have a wellestablished reputation as places where
patients who desire care immediately can
end up waiting hours.
Now, local hospitals from Burbank to the Conejo
Valley are borrowing a bit from both Madison
Avenue and Silicon Valley to change that: they have
been erecting billboards promising shorter wait
times, often through the use of texting and apps.
Perhaps the most prominent campaign is along
the Ventura (101) Freeway in the Conejo Valley
promoting Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks
and West Hills Hospital in Woodland Hills, both
properties of Hospital Corp. of America of
Nashville, Tenn. The signs feature a pair of cyclists
and a number viewers can text for wait times.
“When patients are in pain, they want to be seen
fast, and just because a hospital is closest doesn’t
mean they’ll be treated faster or more efficiently,”
said Adam Blackstone, vice president of marketing
at Los Robles.
When a person responds to the freeway ads by
sending a text, the message goes directly to a scheduling computer at the nearest HCA hospital emergency
PHOTO BY DAVID SPRAGUE
News &
Analysis
Please see RESIDENTIAL page 6
Ikea Heats Up
Climate Fight
DEVELOPMENT: Burbank faces
global warming CEQA suit.
By ELLIOT GOLAN Staff Reporter
In the battle between developers and groups
trying to slow them down, a new weapon is
emerging – global warming. And it’s being put
to the test in Burbank.
Citizens Advocating Rational Development,
a Woodland Hills environmental group, filed a
lawsuit in L.A. Superior Court last month that
seeks to halt construction of the country’s
largest Ikea on grounds the project did not
undergo sufficient review to assess and reduce
its impact on global warming.
The 470,000-square-foot Ikea was
Please see HEALTH CARE page 35
Please see DEVELOPMENT page 34
East Meeting West in Santa Clarita Valley Gym
FITNESS: Ekata mixes hardcore training
with meditation and acupuncture.
By STEPHANIE FORSHEE Staff Reporter
Imagine a gym where you can spar in a boxing ring
for an hour and then relax in a meditation session. Work
out with a private trainer, followed by acupuncture therapy. Take a French kickboxing class and get a massage
– while your children are learning martial arts or completing their homework with a tutor.
At Ekata Training Center’s new facility in Santa
Clarita, it’s all part of the package.
Co-founders Ed Monaghan, 52, and his wife
JoAnn Wabisca, 55, have worked in martial arts studios throughout Los Angeles County for more than 20
years, but this is the first time they have combined
Eastern philosophy and Western sports training under
one roof. The result is half martial arts studio, half
sports club with a few other services on the side.
“Our primary competitors are straight martial arts
schools and gyms,” said Monaghan, who called himself
an admirer of the late actor and martial arts expert Bruce
Lee, who practiced what the gym is trying to teach.
The Ekata training center has been in Santa Clarita
for seven years as a traditional martial arts studio. It
assumed its current configuration in March when the
business moved from a 1,500-square-foot space to a
12,500-square-foot space at 27831 Smyth Drive amid
growing competition.
Like many communities, Santa Clarita has plenty
PHOTO BY THOMAS WASPER
Please see FITNESS page 35
Two Minds: Ed Monaghan at Ekata Training.
Nomination Deadline: Friday, May 9, 2014
NOMINATE NOW!
See page 28 for more information.
REAL ESTATE
Tilemaker Settles In With Build-to-Suit Offices
14
SAN FERNANDO VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL
MAY 5, 2014
unit complex of 1,600-square-foot condos.
Salem said units in Valley Village will
price at about $600,000 while the Studio City
units will price significantly higher – at up to
$900,000 for the penthouse properties, which
will feature private rooftop decks.
INDUSTRIAL: Sun Valley
firm signs 10-year lease
and moves to North Hills.
L
uxury stone and tile maker Walker &
Zanger Inc. has struck a deal to lease a
built-to-suit headquarters in North Hills.
The company will move from its current
home in Sun Valley when the 126,000-squarefoot facility at 16719
Schoenborn St. is complete in the fall of 2015.
The 10-year-lease
with landlord and developer Geringer Capital of Beverly Hills is
valued at roughly $14.7
million, or roughly 97
cents a square foot per
month. As might be
REAL ESTATE expected, that’s significantly higher than the
Elliot Golan
56 cents average in the
first quarter for the
Central San Fernando Valley, according to the
L.A. office of Colliers International.
Pat Petrocelli, chief operating officer at
Walker Zanger, said the facility will help keep
the company in line with client expectations.
“We’ve been looking to relocate from Sun
Valley for some time. It’s just not the environment it was when we moved in 1989,” he said.
Petrocelli said the company has spent the
last several months working on interior
design, including reinforced concrete beams
as high as 30 feet and a showroom.
Walker Zanger has been in business for more
than 60 years and supplies stone and tile for both
Upscale Urban: Rendering of Weddington Villas condos in Sherman Oaks.
residential and commercial development. In 1997,
the firm hit jackpot, supplying all the stone and
tile in guest rooms and common areas for the ritzy
Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. More recently, the
company has worked on a Viceroy hotel on
Anguilla, a Carribbean island. It has 15 showrooms in seven states and more than 200 dealers.
J.D. DeRosa, vice president at the downtown L.A. office of Transwestern, represented
Walker Zanger. He said he spent several years
looking for a new space in the San Fernando
Valley, from Chatsworth to Glendale. “The
existing location is across the street from a
cement plant. It wasn’t exactly ideal,” he said.
Petrocelli said the building is expected to
break ground in September. Geringer did not
return calls seeking comment.
Upscale Urban
A residential broker in Sherman Oaks has
some high-end development plans for the Valley.
Ben Salem, who works at the Sherman
Oaks office of Rodeo Realty Inc., recently
broke ground on what will be the first of three
upscale multifamily projects.
The Weddington Villas, a seven-unit townhome
complex on Sepulveda Boulevard near the Sherman Oaks Galleria, will feature 2,000-square-foot
units with steel framing and top-shelf amenities.
“We want to do something that’s never
been done in the Valley before,” Salem said.
“This is going to be super sexy and sort of
New York. Elevators going directly into the
buildings, terraces on the roof, a lot of exposed steel – something very young and hip.”
The project should be completed in
November and units will be priced between
$700,000 and $800,000.
In addition, Salem and his partners, a friend
from middle school and his dad, will soon break
ground on two other projects: Hermitage Town
Homes, a five-unit development of 2,000square-foot townhomes in Valley Village; and
the Coldwater Villas in Studio City, an eight-
Industrial Condos
An 8-acre industrial park will be coming to
the Conejo Valley. Conejo Merchant Ltd., a
joint venture of Martin Teitelbaum, principal at
Teitelbaum Construction Inc. of Camarillo,
and Hugh Cassar, chief executive of Kretek
International Inc., a Moorpark firm that distributes tobacco products, has purchased a vacant lot
from the city of Thousand Oaks for $1.9 million.
The city had spent about two decades trying to make affordable housing pencil out at
the Conejo Center Drive and Conejo Spectrum Street site before giving up in September.
The buyers plan to build about 75,000 square
feet of industrial space comprising seven buildings
ranging from 4,000 square feet to 8,000 square
feet and commercial condominiums ranging from
about 1,800 square feet to 3,000 square feet.
The market could use the space. According to the L.A. office of Colliers, the industrial vacancy rate in the Conejo Valley was at
1.4 percent – the lowest in the region.
Mike Tingus, president at the L.A. North/
Ventura office of Lee & Associates, who represented both the buyer and the seller, said the
construction is long overdue. “It’s been 25
years since there has been new, smaller-sized
industrial development in this market,” he said.
Grant Fulkerson, principal at the L.A. North/
Ventura office of Lee, also represented both sides.
Staff Reporter Elliot Golan can be reached at
(818) 316-3123 or egolan@sfvbj.com.
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