Business Los Angeles County

Please don't offer Etha Robinson a chocolate chip cookie. Or an Oreo. Or a gingersnap. Not even with a cold glass of milk. Robinson, a baker who teaches biology at Dorsey High School, is committed to a cookie of a different sort, one with a past that is dear to her heart--and a bountiful future. "We grew up on tea cakes," said Robinson, who was born in Yazoo City, Miss., and now lives in Los Angeles. "They were a gift of love. If something has served you well, you never abandon it."

Joey Bebolla spread his wares on the sidewalk of Beach Street in Watts: some plastic aquarium plants, a few used tape players, an ancient BlackBerry. A woman walking by picked up an old toy cash register, which Bebolla had cleaned up after finding it in the trash. "Give me $2," he said. "Fine, give me $1. " The woman passed on the quick discount, and put the item down. "Selling used to be embarrassing, at first," Bebolla said. "But I had to do it to survive, and now I'm used it. " Hawking fruit at freeway offramps or old clothing on driveways and lawns is a Los Angeles tradition.

It all started, as often happens, with a restaurant. Having helped turn Melrose Avenue from a lackluster strip of boarded-up storefronts and furniture refinishers into a funky, neon-lit retailing mecca, the co-owners of City Cafe set their sights on unproven territory on nearby La Brea.

The high-rise market is looking up. Los Angeles County's business owners appear to be increasingly bullish about the future as they expand their offices to accommodate growth. Though office occupancy changed little across most of the nation in the third quarter, the county's vacancy rate tightened to an average of 15.5%, according to a survey by real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

It's not the Left Bank in Paris or a Florence piazza. But who cares when the espresso is so fittingly forte , the cappuccino so suitably foamy? Certainly not the customers savoring gourmet Euro-brews at Starbucks Coffee, a cafe in the Torrance Crossroads shopping center. They sit at sidewalk tables gazing on the black asphalt parking lot as if it were the Eiffel Tower or Michelangelo's David.

Five men accused of being part of an extortion ring that preyed on their fellow Iranians were on a "quest" for power and money when they forced their way into ownership of two businesses, a prosecutor said Monday. During her opening statement in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial of the five men, Deputy Dist. Atty.

Insisting that an area code change would cause irreparable harm to city businesses and generally confuse local callers, residents and representatives of business on Wednesday urged public utility officials to preserve the city's 562 area code. At a public hearing, representatives of the California Public Utilities Commission met with residents to outline options for changing the area code.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last week approved an increase in business license fees for the 1989-90 fiscal year. The cost of getting a business license in the county increased anywhere from $20 to $513.

Chhuong Kang recently moved to the San Gabriel Valley. The idea, he said, was to make it more difficult for gang members to follow him home from the jewelry store his family owns in Little Phnom Penh, the Cambodian business district along Anaheim Street in Long Beach. Neang Chey said he closed the Phnom Penh Market on the same street six months ago after a group of suspected gang members toting guns ordered 30 customers to lie on the floor while they ransacked the cash register.

Renting a video can be like exploring new worlds during a visit to one of the countless independent video stores scattered around Southern California. Instead of 100 copies of the latest releases, these shops are apt to have shelves bursting with eclectic foreign films, classic dramas, rare silent movies and trashy B-flicks. Despite growing competition from cable satellite and pay-per-view, the video rental business is experiencing a slight upswing. The Video Software Dealers Assn.

After massive aerospace cutbacks and the recession of the early 1990s, the South Bay's commercial real estate market remade itself and rebounded strongly by attracting a more diverse and entrepreneurial group of tenants. Now, landlords and real estate investors are counting on that diversity to soften the effect of a slowing economy.

California Amforge Corp.'s operations were idle last Monday because of the energy crisis, even though the region wasn't experiencing a power emergency. The Azusa manufacturer of aerospace parts has worked out a deal with Azusa Light & Water, or AL&W, to shut down every Monday, all summer long, to help the municipally owned utility meet an obligation to trim customer demand. In hindsight, the company closed a whole day for nothing: The state's power grid had plenty of electricity.

Months of body blows to the dot-com sector and other downward pressures on the technology sector have yet to humble landlords who cater to tech firms along a stretch of the Ventura Freeway where Los Angeles and Ventura counties meet. Large companies are still searching for empty space in the 30-mile cluster of communities--including Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and Calabasas--known collectively as the 101 Technology Corridor.

The USC Business Expansion Network has received more than $530,000 in federal funding to operate a Business Development Center serving central Los Angeles County. The center will be able to help more local businesses with entrepreneurial training and one-on-one business consulting. For more information, contact (213) 821-2100.

Working at the epicenter of the Los Angeles Internet slowdown, Brenda Arechiga watched friends lose their jobs as Hollywood dot-coms went dot-bomb. But when she was called into the Venice offices of her entertainment information Web site and let go in a round of layoffs a few weeks ago, "I was just astounded," Arechiga said. "I was in a daze. I thought I was one of my CEO's key people.

More than 30 years ago, Joseph A. Thomson bought a small Burbank industrial property for his growing business, assured by federal nuclear regulators that the site was free of radioactive contamination. Officials now acknowledge that the property contains hazardous atomic waste left behind by previous occupants and that the government erred decades ago in certifying it as safe. They are demanding that the 85-year-old retiree pay millions of dollars in cleanup costs.

To David Chartier, the sign at Break Zone Billiards in Torrance says it all about what has happened to his favorite game: "No alcoholic beverages. No gambling. No chewing tobacco. No foul language." There are no pool sharks here. No barroom brawls. Little smoke to speak of. Rather, this is a family place, a far cry from the image presented by old movies such as "The Hustler." Throughout Southern California, bar owners and pool veterans are riding a resurgence of the game.

The Northridge Fashion Center's Farmers' Market & Family Festival is one of 10 Certified Farmers' Markets in and around the San Fernando Valley, and one of 50 in Los Angeles County Certification, which is controlled by each county's agriculture department, signifies that the produce is California-grown by the farmer who is selling it. Farmers must also meet quality standards to receive certification, but are freed from some of the packaging requirements imposed on grocery stores.

Best Buy Co. Inc. has leased a 45,000-square-foot store in Glendale at 2909 Los Feliz Blvd. The new store, set to open in late fall, will employ about 150 full- and part-time employees. Best Buy of Minneapolis, Minn., sells consumer electronics, computers, entertainment software and appliances.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter on Friday reaffirmed city and county support for a futuristic 700-mile high-speed train linking Northern and Southern California, but local business leaders are taking a "wait and see" approach to the struggling proposal. The differences emerged in the latest of a series of meetings being held around the state in an effort by its sponsors to build a consensus in support of the high-speed rail plan.