Business Closings

Home Depot Inc. announced Monday that it was closing its 34 upscale Expo and other home specialty centers and laying off 7,000 people as a result of the crumbling U.S. housing market and worldwide economic downturn. The company said it would close its 34 sprawling Expo Design Center stores by April, including eight in Southern California, and 14 smaller stores. Some employees were stunned. "Shock. It was shock.

With thousands of Chrysler and General Motors Corp. dealerships closing, customers could be confronted with problems over warranty coverage, trade-ins or other matters. Both automakers pledge to make the contraction as painless as possible, but that doesn't mean there won't be problems. "When all of these relationships are disrupted, you can't help but have some elements of chaos, and some practical problems occur," said Aaron H. Jacoby, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents car dealers.

Determined to prevent the Mongols motorcycle club from using a Lancaster motel to host its annual meeting this weekend, the city's mayor has taken steps to shut down the establishment. Mayor R. Rex Parris said the members of the Mongols, which law enforcement agencies consider a violent biker gang, are not welcome in Lancaster because they "are engaged in domestic terrorism . . . and they kill our children."

Two decades ago, real estate mogul Randy Black turned this blip on the Arizona border into a boomtown when he opened the first of four casinos. Nearly 1 million visitors a year followed, and hotels, restaurants and stucco homes seemed to sprout from sand. "It seemed to be one of those things that 'Geez, it's just going great. It's never going to end,' " said Victor Kotalion, who left Las Vegas in 1990 for this arid patch off Interstate 15.

A decade ago, big banks and thrifts began closing branches in the belief that clicks would replace bricks as customers moved their business online. But consumers weren't ready, and the experiment was soon abandoned. Now the old model may finally be changing. Bank of America Corp.

Bankrupt Circuit City Stores Inc. said Friday it was closing its 567 U.S. electronics stores and leaving its 34,000 employees jobless as the nation's employment picture grew bleaker. It was the worst day this year for news of layoffs, bank losses and store closings, and employers signaled more bad news ahead. Car rental firm Hertz Global Holdings Inc., oil producer ConocoPhillips, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and health insurer WellPoint Inc.

The Motion Picture & Television Fund -- a charity started by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and other Hollywood luminaries to care for entertainers who fell on hard times -- said Wednesday that it was closing a hospital and nursing home by year's end. With more than 500 hospital admissions last year and about 100 long-term residents, the Woodland Hills facilities have been a $10-million annual drain on the fund's budget for the last four years.

With struggling automakers expected to announce the shutdown of thousands of dealerships starting today, cities are bracing for a wave of blight. The closings will dump thousands of large, oddly configured parcels into an already reeling commercial real estate market. Many are likely to remain empty for a long time, monuments to the decline of the U.S. auto industry and the intensity of this recession.

Car dealers -- sponsors of Little League, fixtures of Main Street, vibrant symbols of the American entrepreneurial dream -- could now prove to be the biggest threat to the future of the very industry they built. For much of the last century, in exchange for selling Detroit's new models and providing a public face to distant industrial giants, dealers were richly rewarded with a steady, lucrative business and received community respect.

One of Hollywood's largest prop shops is closing, the latest sign that the falloff in local film and TV production is taking its toll on small businesses that serve the entertainment industry. 20th Century Props of North Hollywood said Thursday that it would shut its doors next month because of mounting business losses. The prop shop, which supplied the chandeliers in the blockbuster "Titanic" and futuristic furniture in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," has been a fixture for two decades.