Business Closings

Dozens of aspiring parents and the women they hired to be surrogate mothers filed a class action lawsuit this week against a Modesto-based surrogacy agency that abruptly shut its doors and stopped returning phone calls, leaving hundreds of thousands of client dollars unaccounted for, according to the allegations.

Yahoo Inc. said Thursday that it would shut down its GeoCities free Web-hosting service after paying about $3 billion for the unit in 1999. GeoCities isn't accepting new accounts and will close later this year, Yahoo said. GeoCities, Yahoo's second-biggest acquisition behind Broadcast.com Inc., lets users design personal websites to show off photos, promote local clubs or publicize business services.

Detroit's woes are hitting Main Street with a vengeance. Chrysler moved Thursday to eliminate 789 of its dealers, using its bankruptcy status to break their franchise contracts. And as many as 1,200 General Motors Corp. dealers are expected to receive termination notices as soon as today, with an additional 1,400 coming as GM works to meet a June 1 restructuring deadline.

As troubles escalated in recent weeks for ailing Chrysler, Doug Swaim, general manager at Star Chrysler Jeep in Glendale, was cautiously optimistic. The store was meeting sales expectations. He was still receiving shipments of new cars. Last week, Chrysler even asked the dealer to help host a customer appreciation event in June. So Swaim was stunned Thursday morning when he saw Star Chrysler Jeep's name on the list of nearly 800 U.S.

The painful reshaping of the American auto industry hit home this week, delivered overnight by FedEx and UPS. Over the last two days, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler moved to cull nearly 2,000 of their dealers, with at least 1,000 more to come. And Chrysler indicated that it was likely to break its contracts with hundreds of parts suppliers, setting the stage for yet another blow to American manufacturing. The sweeping cuts were a reminder that the decades-long decline of the U.S.

A federal judge on Tuesday declined to force Gannett Co. to keep open the Tucson Citizen, meaning the edition of the afternoon newspaper published Saturday was its last. U.S. District Judge Raner Collins denied a request for a temporary restraining order filed by Arizona Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard, who contended that closing the 138-year-old paper violated antitrust laws.

Murray Gershenz knows he's setting something of a record by giving a new spin to his career this late in life. After all, Gershenz has spent most of his 87 years collecting music -- old operas preserved on tube-like Edison cylinders, Big Band-era crooners on brittle 78 rpm discs, emerging rock stars on small 45s and established pop artists on larger LP albums. He owns as many as 400,000 records. But now, "Music Man Murray" plans to unload his collection so he can become a full-time actor.

State legislators are scrambling to save the last remaining car plant in California. The Bay Area factory, which makes Toyota Corollas, Toyota Tundras and Pontiac Vibes, would receive sales tax benefits potentially worth millions of dollars under legislation introduced in the Assembly on Wednesday. Another, more sweeping, bill, which would grant a host of tax and other incentives, is expected to be introduced in the state Senate today.

Moviegoers in the 1960s and '70s flocked to Westwood Village, where they had their pick of first-run films on nearly 20 screens. With parking scarce, patrons stashed their cars at the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard and took shuttles into the village. A-list celebrities turned out for frequent splashy openings. The occasional premiere still brings red carpets and klieg lights, but the neighborhood near UCLA is no longer the movie hub it once was.

Once a municipal landmark found in even the smallest communities, the neighborhood post office is slowly going the way of the handwritten letter. So much so that the U.S. Postal Service is considering closing nearly 1,000 of its smaller branches nationwide, with dozens of them in California. But even as the Postal Service weighs public reaction, small communities on the list worry that they'll lose a needed service. And in places like San Juan Capistrano, officials are fighting to save their city's only post office.