Business Los Angeles

City officials will ask the MTA to provide more money for about 80 North Hollywood businesses hurt by a planned 26-day closure of Lanksershim Boulevard for subway construction. Prompted by complaints from business owners who say the construction has already driven away customers and caused a raft of other problems, the City Council voted Tuesday to ask the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to provide more money to lessen the impact of planned repairs to Lankershim.

To entice two international linguists societies to hold their 1999 conventions in Los Angeles, city officials put on an exquisite evening of fine food and a literary program, featuring Ray Bradbury at the Central Library. Illinois professor Allan A. Metcalf, who had flown in from the American Council of Learned Societies to inspect Los Angeles as a possible venue for the joint meetings of the Linguistic Society of America and American Dialect Society, was impressed.

A building inspection sweep prompted by the death of a veteran firefighter found that 18 out of 25 businesses in a South Los Angeles commercial district failed to meet fire safety and building codes, according to a report released Thursday. Los Angeles Fire Capt. Joseph C. Dupee died March 8 after the roof caved in on him during a fire in a commercial building on Western Avenue near 60th Street. An investigation found fire and building code violations in the structure.

In the midst of a crisis with its largest loan ever, the Los Angeles Community Development Bank is turning to a new strategy to strengthen key industries instead of merely financing isolated and often-troubled inner-city companies. The shift in approach--unveiled last month--comes at a time when the federally funded bank's $10-million loan to a South Los Angeles dairy teeters on the brink of default.

If the Los Angeles City Council decides to seek more money for North Hollywood businesses harmed by the proposed 26-day closure of Lankershim Boulevard, then the Metropolitan Transportation Authority might have to take almost three months longer to repair the street, MTA officials said Friday. Lankershim needs repairs because it was damaged by underground construction of the North Hollywood extension of the Metro Red Line.

The city Transportation Committee has decided to draft a letter asking the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to equitably compensate business owners along Lankershim Boulevard who would be negatively affected by upcoming road work. The City Council must approve the Transportation Committee's action at its meeting Tuesday before the letter could be sent to the MTA.

When Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan announced his initiative to promote local new-media firms, the goal was for companies in L.A. and neighboring cities to band together to compete against clusters of companies in Silicon Valley, New York and other rival locales. But a mere six months later, he is poaching firms from his Digital Coast neighbors. This morning, Riordan will hold a news conference to crow that his Business Team has wooed Web site developer DigitalFacades to L.A.

Figueroa Street businesses in the shadow of the Staples Center complex currently under construction may be eligible for an expansion and improvement loan through Comerica Bank-California and the city of Los Angeles. Loans currently carrying an interest rate of 8.75% are available for businesses that qualify and are located on, or about to locate to, Figueroa Street between Wilshire Boulevard and Vernon Avenue.

According to a new poll commissioned by some of Los Angeles' leading business institutions, the views of the city's likely voters contradict two key assumptions now guiding efforts to rewrite the city's charter: the notions that people overwhelmingly support powerful new neighborhood councils and that they oppose proposals to expand the City Council. In fact, the new poll concluded that 53.

A federal crackdown restricting the types of helicopters allowed to fly over Los Angeles and other congested areas throughout the nation could cost businesses millions of dollars and force some operators to financially crash, pilots and others in the industry say.