Construction creates jobs. But it’s tough to get large infrastructure projects going when they’re blocked by overly stringent environmental laws and state regulations that slow and sometimes halt the process.
While some states are debating whether they should have film tax incentives at all, others are starting to offer cold, hard cash to attract Hollywood production. Montana just joined the ranks of those offering cash benefits to filmmakers.
Flippers and move-up buyers are out in force, and foreclosures are shrinking to an increasingly minor part of Sacramento’s housing market, DataQuick said Thursday.
In another nod to San Francisco’s increasingly upbeat economy, the Planning Commission called Thursday for an end to a 3-year-old fee deferral program designed to prop up the then-struggling local construction industry. “The commission has seen big increases in permit activity,” said AnMarie Rodgers, manager of legislative affairs for the Planning Department. “Certainly everyone agrees that the economic situation is far better now than when the program started.”
Bay Area single family home prices continued a skyward climb in May, reaching their highest level in more than five years, according to a report Thursday. Median sales prices in the sizzling market were given an upward nudge in the East Bay, Peninsula and South Bay by multiple offers for a scant supply of houses for sale and by a change in the market mix to favor higher-priced homes, said real estate information company DataQuick.
Foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac says “notices of default,” the first stage of the foreclosure process, went up by just over 3% from April to May. RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist says it was the fourth straight monthly increase. But Blomquist says it’s not a sign of any new problems in California’s housing market.
Company: LA County Superior CourtCA Net Job Gain/Loss: -511Reason: LayoffCity/Region Losing Jobs: Los Angeles, CA
“Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?” the venture capitalist Paul Graham asked in a much-quoted keynote address at Xtech back in 2006. Graham then went on to describe the key ingredients (a great university, an attractive town, smart people, youth, a tolerance for eccentricity and different thinking, and a cluster of other start-ups) that make Silicon Valley the unique ecosystem for entrepreneurial innovation that it is — and that differentiate it from its would-be imitators and competitors.
Three years after combining their names to create Venley, a company that produces T-shirts and other basics in a downtown Los Angeles factory, onetime fraternity brothers Nick Ventura and Kevin Gressley find manufacturing clothes in the U.S. to be an expensive and frustrating undertaking.
For the last two years, media companies have been combating a series of lawsuits brought by interns claiming the right to a paycheck under state and federal law. Things began looking good for team management this past May, after a federal court scuttled the class action filed by a former Harper’s Bazaar intern against Hearst Magazines.
SELMA — California’s $44 billion agricultural industry faces a worsening labor shortage as farmworkers age, more return home to Mexico and fewer new migrants arrive to replace them.
The permanent closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant leaves significant unanswered questions about the future of the energy supply in Southern California, the head of the state’s Public Utilities Commission acknowledged Tuesday.
AOL Co-Founder Steve Case has a great perspective on the country’s vast and varied startup universe. Now Chairman of Startup America and CEO of Revolution, a venture capital fund based in Washington, D.C., Case wrote a February blog post for the Wall Street Journal describing what he’s dubbed the “rise of the rest.”
The U.S. has become more competitive with other nations in manufacturing costs over the past decade.
Company: Ceradyne Inc.CA Net Job Gain/Loss: -90Reason: LayoffCity/Region Losing Jobs: Costa Mesa, CA