In the Money
San Diego gets top-10 treatment in Money magazine’s November issue as one of the country’s “boom regions” through the year 2000. The publication ranked the areas for population and job growth rates.
Attributes that contributed to San Diego’s ranking were the growing research triangle of UCSD Medical School, Salk Institute and the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic; job growth in North County’s biotechnology and electronics sectors and growth in the area’s service sectors of medicine, law and tourism.
Not So Fine
San Diego Gas & Electric will decide in the next few days whether to ask the state Supreme Court to review its decision last week to reject the utility’s request to overturn a $45-million state fine. The fine, the largest in Public Utilities Commission history, was levied because officials found that SDG&E; used poor judgment in extending a 1979 fuel oil contract.
SDG&E; has 15 days to appeal the court’s decision. If it decides not to, then it has 90 days to seek a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Safe at Home
Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad’s entertaining slide presentation of his art and readers’ reaction to it was well received at last week’s San Diego Press Club 1985 awards dinner.
First to greet him after his talk: San Diego Padres owner Joan Kroc, who shares Conrad’s anti-nuclear arms philosophies.
Checking In
Hotel Inter-Continental’s incentive plan that gives guests free round-trip airline tickets to Europe for every eight nights they stay in the hotel apparently has been successful. So much so that hotel officials have expanded the promotion to include 17 affiliated hotels.
According to Inter-Continental officials here, the promotion boosted its occupancy levels by 10% in the past 12 months, or about 60 rooms per night.
Checking Out
Few would claim that Nick Sylvester weathered his job through thick and thin as public relations-advertising chief at developer Carroll Davis’ Radisson Hotel.
That’s only because there were mostly thin times. Sylvester joined the hotel after its $27.5 million in construction loans were thrown into default by federal regulators and things went financially downhill from there, culminating in a bankruptcy action in August.
That soon will be just a memory for Sylvester, however: He’ll become vice president of PR for Chase/Simpson Advertising on Nov. 4.
On the Slow Track
The wheels of justice on the criminal side grind much faster than in civil cases. Con man J. David (Jerry) Dominelli was indicted one year ago last Friday, suffered a nearly paralyzing stroke a year ago Wednesday and is now serving a 20-year sentence for fraud in connection with his La Jolla investment firm.
But the bankruptcy case drags on. Slowly. In fact, J. David & Co. bankruptcy trustee Louis Metzger only recently completed filing lawsuits against those investors who withdrew funds in the 90 days before the J. David & Co. bankruptcy in February, 1984.
The totals: 120 people have been sued for $17.2 million in preference payments and $12.6 million in “fraudulent conveyances,” or funds transferred improperly. There is some overlap of funds, according to trustee attorney Mark McKeon, who estimated that the net amount could be at least $24 million.
