Branch Office

The Better Business Bureau of Los Angeles/Orange Counties, which closed last week after running out of money, may be replaced by branch offices of a bureau based in San Bernardino County if a local proposal receives national approval. BBB officials confirmed Wednesday that the board of the beleaguered Los Angeles/Orange County bureau approved the branch-office plan at a private meeting Tuesday and will submit it to the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Alexandria, Va.

A bank's branch office in Alhambra is helping Fame Rybicki become famous. The 91-year-old former school administrator and community activist was startled to discover that a photograph taken of her in August 1926 had been incorporated into a large mural that decorates a newly opened Wells Fargo office on the city's Main Street. The mural is a montage of historic photos that salute 112-year-old Alhambra's early days. A 5-year-old Rybicki is shown standing with family members and uniformed attendants in front of several cars gassing up at her father's service station.

Thomas V. McKernan, chief executive of the Automobile Club of Southern California, has retired after serving 46 years with the organization, including 21 in the top post. He was succeeded by Robert Bouttier, who previously was the club's president and chief operating officer. McKernan started out as a customer service representative in the Pasadena branch in 1966 and worked his way up the corporate ladder, serving as a computer programmer and chief financial officer before his appointment as CEO in 1991.

San Bernardino-based Highland Soils Engineering Inc. and Highland Testing Laboratory Inc., subsidiaries of the Irvine Consulting Group, have opened a branch office and laboratory in Indio at 80-975 Indio Blvd.

Gallant Solutions, a Camarillo-based provider of technical staffing and executive search services as well as environmental consulting, has opened a branch office in Albuquerque, N.M. The new unit will concentrate on serving New Mexico's energy and defense industries, said Bill Barbee, Gallant's executive vice president. "Several of our consulting clients in Ventura County have interests in New Mexico, so it seemed natural to expand our efforts in that state," Barbee said.

Construction has started on the $5-million, 57,000-square-foot first phase of a new branch office for the Hewlett Packard Co. in the Irvine Business Complex-East. Designed for eventual expansion to 110,000 square feet by Albert C. Martin & Associates of Los Angeles and Irvine, the office is being built on an 8.6-acre site at 9800 Muirlands Ave. Phase 1 completion is scheduled in September.

An Encino commercial real estate concern that is involved in developing a regional mall in Simi Valley has opened a branch office there. The brokerage, Capital Commercial Real Estate, is representing Forest City Development and the city of Simi Valley in negotiating to buy 80 acres for the proposed Simi Valley Regional Mall. Developers hope to build five department stores on the property, at the Simi Valley Freeway between Erringer Road and 1st Street.

Top University of California administrators, who have been permanently based on the UC system's mother campus in Berkeley, want a branch office in Irvine. The proposal, if approved later this month by the Board of Regents, would put the branch in the Jamboree Center business complex in Irvine. It would not be a part of the UC Irvine campus. UC officials said Friday that the branch would serve UC President David P.

The FBI has opened a branch office in Lancaster in response to a rise in white-collar crime and bank robberies in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys. The two outlying valleys were previously served by agents from the FBI's Westwood office, but maintaining a presence in Lancaster is more cost-effective than having agents commute, said Gary Auer, the FBI supervisor in charge of the Lancaster branch and bureau operations in Ventura and Santa Barbara.

If the University of California is the home of campus protest, finding the correct address is simple. Just follow the messages written in brightly colored chalk on the sidewalk of Piedmont Avenue alongside Memorial Stadium. All Life Is Sacred Value Life Not Capital Trees = Oxygen Love Your Mother. When USC fans show up for Saturday's football game against Cal, there will be plenty of reading material, and it's there at their feet.

When the U.S. Forest Service was inaugurated in 1905, managing the nation's wildlands was a collegial affair. The first chief of the forest, Gifford Pinchot, at right, was a Yale classmate of President Theodore Roosevelt. Foresters would meet in Pinchot's D.C.-area home, choose new areas to become national forests and then retire for drinks. But the camaraderie was gone five years later, when Pinchot was dumped by then-President Taft. Ever since, controversy has tinged the agency's reputation.

Ameritrade Holding Corp., the biggest online broker by customer trades, plans to open its first branch office next week in a bid to win more business. A two-person office in Scottsdale, Ariz., will be followed by one or two more in Austin, Texas. The company may open 20 more if the first are successful, Chief Executive Joseph Moglia said.

In an era when the dividing line between work and home life is increasingly blurred, architects Robin Donaldson and Russell Shubin design offices that feel a lot like home, even if they look like something out a sci-fi movie. Hard-edged and avant-garde, oozing with attitude and moody lighting, the interiors created by Shubin and Donaldson--two men in their 40s who shuttle between offices in Culver City and Santa Barbara--are a world away from the paneled-wood boardrooms of yesteryear.

Offering easier access to credit counseling for Valley residents, the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Los Angeles opened a branch office in Woodland Hills on Tuesday. The nonprofit organization opened its new office at 21241-3 Ventura Blvd., Suite 153, to help ease the heavy traffic at its Granada Hills branch. With 17 offices in Los Angeles County, the agency serves about 15,000 clients through its debt repayment program, spokeswoman Jennifer Root said.

Kinko's Service Corp., whose worldwide headquarters is in Ventura, has launched its high-tech "your branch office" drive at a newly opened store on that city's Main Street. The store will be one of the first in the chain to offer video-conferencing and conference rooms that can be rented by the hour. The first phase of the video-conferencing system will become operational in April.

The phone rang all day Wednesday at the NAACP branch office in Hollywood. And callers seemed surprised when it was answered. "Everybody thinks we're closed," office manager Veronica McCreary said. "We're not the ones. It's the national headquarters that's closed." Word that the venerable civil rights organization was broke and laying off employees at its main office in Baltimore was creating unexpected confusion at some of the 1,800 local chapters across the country. National Assn.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialists and his police on Wednesday blamed the opposition for a blast that shook a branch office, further raising tensions ahead of a major anti-Milosevic rally. No one was injured, but the blast shattered windows in the building and throughout the neighborhood in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital.

Architect Leason F. Pomeroy, founder of LPA Inc., one of the state's largest architectural firms and designer of such projects as the Tustin Market Place retail complex and the John Wayne Airport passenger terminal, has resigned as chairman. Pomeroy's departure is part of a planned succession program, said Robert O. Kupper, the company's chief executive and Pomeroy's likely successor as chairman when the private firm's board meets.