Construction

Long Beach Airport (LGB) this week will open a new parking structure, bringing all airport parking on-site and within walking distance of the main terminal building. But it will also shut down its cheapest lot. The new Lot B parking garage, under construction for more than a year near the terminal, holds about 2,000 cars. Airport spokeswoman Kim McMahon said the lot will open at 12:01 a.m. Friday. On the same day, remote parking Lot D at Lakewood Boulevard and Conant Street will be closed, although of course cars already parked there can remain until they exit, McMahon said.

Culture Monster will occasionally visit museum exhibits dealing with history, anthropology, science or sociology. The show : "Visions of Empire: The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840-1880" at theHuntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The goods : The Huntington archives supply 98% of the exhibits, from the resolutions of eight Eastern states to build it, to a railway worker's letter home to his mother and the ledgers workers signed (one with Chinese characters)

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

There's so much to praise in the blissful Broadway revival of "Follies," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre on the heels of its numerous Tony nominations, but let's pay homage first to the sheer sophistication of the show itself. After experiencing "Follies" again - an adult entertainment if ever there was one - I flat-out refuse to accept any more jukebox substitutes. One doesn't often talk about architecture when writing about musicals, but the most impressive thing about "Follies," beyond Stephen Sondheim's bejeweled score, is the ingenious way it is constructed.

The biggest home in Los Angeles County is ready for a new nickname: The 56,500-square-foot Manor, dubbed Candyland after owner Candy Spelling, has been sold to another wealthy socialite, British heiress Petra Ecclestone, in an all-cash deal for $85 million. As steep as that price is, it's not a record or even close to what Spelling was asking. The priciest Southland home transaction was the 2000 sale of an 8-acre estate in Bel-Air to financial executive Gary Winnick in a deal that included the trade of other land, for a total value of about $94 million.

As warehouses go, there are few like Skechers USA Inc.'s new 1.82-million-square-foot distribution center. This warehouse is so big that it takes half a minute to drive from one end to the other at 60 miles per hour. The setup is so advanced that human hands will hardly touch the cargo as it is unpacked, categorized, stacked and prepared for delivery. The building is so green that it uses prevailing winds for ventilation instead of air conditioning. For its new North American operations warehouse, the nation's No. 2 footwear company chose the Inland Empire's Moreno Valley.

There's so much to praise in the blissful Broadway revival of "Follies," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre on the heels of its numerous Tony nominations, but let's pay homage first to the sheer sophistication of the show itself. After experiencing "Follies" again - an adult entertainment if ever there was one - I flat-out refuse to accept any more jukebox substitutes. One doesn't often talk about architecture when writing about musicals, but the most impressive thing about "Follies," beyond Stephen Sondheim's bejeweled score, is the ingenious way it is constructed.

Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.

Like many other spouses of undocumented immigrants, Gina Pope constantly worries that her husband suddenly could be deported and that she would be left to raise their two children by herself. Pope, a U.S. citizen, wants to apply for him to get a green card but knows that would mean his traveling to his native Peru, with the risk of not returning for months or years. Now, after more than a decade of waiting for the immigration rules to change, Pope is cautiously optimistic that her husband, who owns a residential construction business and has a temporary work permit, may finally be able to become a legal resident.

Construction of a massive new project in Irvine consisting of nearly 5,000 homes and 1.2 million square feet of commercial space is underway, according to the company in charge of the effort. FivePoint Communities Management Inc. broke ground on the Great Park Neighborhoods project Tuesday. The development sits on the site of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Irvine approved the first phase of the construction last year. "With today's groundbreaking, we are moving forward with the first phase of Great Park Neighborhoods.

Worldwide rights to the Fred Segal name, a moniker that over the last five decades has become a sort of shorthand for the Los Angeles fashion-shopping experience, have been purchased by a New York City firm for an undisclosed sum. Sandow Media, which announced the acquisition, said the deal will allow it to put the iconic red, white and blue Fred Segal logo on merchandise as well as build Fred Segal stores around the world. Not included in the deal are the two brick-and-mortar Fred Segal retail centers — one on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and one in Santa Monica.

SACRAMENTO — Officials Monday announced an overhaul of California prisons that would cut spending by billions of dollars, cancel some construction projects, close one lockup and bring back 9,500 inmates housed in other states — all while meeting court orders to reduce crowding and improve medical care. If state lawmakers and federal judges sign off on the proposals, California's long-troubled prison system would look significantly different by 2016 — smaller, cheaper and more autonomous.

The 10 campuses of the UC system should be given more power to govern themselves and be allowed to set their own tuition, decide how many out-of-state students to enroll, approve construction projects and control some investments under a proposal released Monday by UC Berkeley leaders. The plan, which is already provoking debate, would maintain the central Board of Regents for such overarching policy matters as admissions standards, state funding and top appointments. But it contends that UC has gotten so complex and governance has become so balky that campus governing boards should be established and given autonomy over many issues, similar to states in a federal system.

After an extended lull brought on by the economic downturn, commercial real estate developers are building again. Some of the activity involves the revival of projects that stopped during the recession, but many others are new from the ground up and mark the return of construction cranes to the Southern California skyline along with the injection of billions of dollars into the local economy. An intense demand for apartments is the biggest driver of development, as the improving economy supports the formation of new households.

The first documented outbreak of canine distemper in desert kit foxes has spread beyond its origins at a construction site west of Blythe and could take a heavy toll on the species, state wildlife biologists said Tuesday. Biologists have nearly given up hope of containing the deadly virus. It was first diagnosed in October during construction at the $1-billion Genesis Solar Energy Project site, about 25 miles west of Blythe. Eight of the cat-sized foxes died there. Since then, distemper has been detected in living kit foxes and two dead ones up to 11 miles south of Genesis, said Deana Clifford, wildlife veterinarian for the California Department of Fish and Game.

LONDON - As a longtime Londoner but not much of a sports fan, Elaine Potter has cast a mostly skeptical eye over the Olympics and all the related fuss - the omnipresent marketing, the endless media coverage. But gazing out over the shiny new stadium in London's East End for the first time this week, with a friend who dragged her to go see it, Potter admitted to some second thoughts. "It's looking good," said Potter, 56, who's tempering her opinion of the Games as one big headache.

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, which has been in the planning stages for a decade and a half, finally will begin construction on its Beverly Hills site next month. After roughly two years of construction, the center will open its doors in 2013, organizers say. Ground on the parking lot was broken last March, but this April's construction start will be the first work on the center's theater space itself, which will include the extension of a well-preserved 1930s former post office on North Canon Drive.

State regulators on Wednesday unanimously cleared the Abengoa Mojave Solar Project for construction, pushing California closer to approving 4,300 megawatts of solar power by the end of the year. The 250-megawatt Abengoa project is one of nine solar proposals angling for the go-ahead from the California Energy Commission by the end of 2010, when federal stimulus funds expire. The commission unanimously approved the 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project at the end of August and is likely to consider the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project next week.

The economic recovery is happening at a very slow and not especially steady pace, according to new indicators that include construction spending sliding to a 7-month low and ever-so-slight improvement in the manufacturing sector. Construction spending in February fell 1.1% to an annual rate of $808.9 billion - the lowest amount since October, according to the Commerce Department. That makes for the second straight monthly decline after the 0.8% dip in January, even though February's rate is up 5.8% compared with the same month in 2011.

With tourism on the rise in downtown Los Angeles, construction is set to begin on a $172-million Marriott hotel complex that has even bigger aspirations than when it was announced almost a year ago. Downtown's thriving hotel market can be seen in the long-anticipated development near the L.A. Live entertainment complex and Staples Center, which has grown by a floor and 15 additional rooms from the original plan. Now set to be 23 stories, the tower on Olympic Boulevard will house a 174-room Courtyard by Marriott and a 218-room Residence Inn by Marriott under one roof when it opens in summer 2014.