Leases

Circuit City Stores Inc. said it planned to break the leases for almost all the 155 stores it was closing this month. The Richmond, Va., company was scheduled to auction the leases today as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection proceedings. But too few bids came in to hold the auction, a spokesman said. The company had hoped to sell the leases to reduce its costs, help it get financing and aid its restructuring, it said in court documents.

A year after making one of the largest office leasing deals in more than a decade, Fox Interactive Media is abandoning plans to move into nearly a half-million square feet of office space in Playa Vista. The company is committed to a 12-year, approximately $350-million lease. But now it faces financial difficulties and plans to lay off some of the people who were slated to move into two new office buildings in the splashy development near Marina del Rey.

Tarzana Treatment Center, the largest publicly funded provider of drug rehabilitation in Los Angeles County, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond what the law allows to lease buildings from its own executives and board members over the last year, according to a report by county auditors. The review was ordered by county supervisors in June after a Times story revealed that executives at the nonprofit receive compensation that is unusually high for the industry and benefit from other lucrative financial arrangements.

If the future is widespread use of electric cars, it may arrive in San Diego before other places in car-happy Southern California. Renault-Nissan and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. announced a deal Monday to deploy Nissan's new all-electric vehicle on the roads here before it hits the consumer market in 2012. The utility plans to lease 15 to 20 and urge its customers -- private, public and military -- to consider switching to electric vehicles.

Suffering from lessee's remorse? In the past, making an early exit from a car lease was about as easy as getting out of jail free. Now a handful of websites are offering restless consumers a chance at freedom while also providing an option for those who want to lease but aren't happy with the terms their local dealerships are offering. Two leading lease transfer sites -- LeaseTrader.com and -- operate somewhat like the online car-selling services that have become common in recent years.

The show at Beyond Baroque will go on, thanks to an L.A. City Council vote Friday extending its lease in a city-owned building. Just hours before the Venice literary arts center's lease was to expire, the council voted 11 to 0 to extend it for 25 years.

Anti-billboard activists have a new target: multi-story "supergraphic" signs plastered illegally on about three dozen buildings citywide. A handful of West Los Angeles activists joined City Councilman Jack Weiss on West Pico Boulevard at Overland Avenue on Thursday morning to call for hefty fines against those who post the signs. Their backdrop: a Gap Inc. supergraphic with a blond model reclining across several stories of an office building in the 10000 block of West Pico Boulevard.

Fight on? Not anymore. USC and the Coliseum Commission have worked through their differences, and Wednesday signed off on their first long-term lease, one that will keep the Trojans playing football at the historic stadium for decades to come. It was six months ago that USC, frustrated with the lack of progress on much-needed improvements to the 84-year-old Coliseum, threatened to relocate its games to the Rose Bowl.

The auto leasing business is crashing, with major carmakers and leading banks bailing out of what was once a lucrative line. But that could be a good thing for small leasing companies, experts say. "It has been nuts this week," said John Blair, chief executive of Santa Barbara-based Automotive Lease Guide, which establishes baseline lease values. "There have been nonstop moves and countermoves by everyone." On Thursday, General Motors Corp.

The Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday backed off from plans to auction more than a dozen leases to explore for oil and gas on the doorstep of several national parks, deflecting accusations by environmental groups that it was handing a "parting gift" to the energy industry before the Obama administration takes over. The agency still will proceed with more than 100 lease sales at a Dec. 19 auction.