Pep Boys

Pep Boys of California has occupied its new $7-million headquarters building at 1122 W. Washington Blvd., and the old headquarters 150 feet to the north has been demolished. The 57,275-square-foot structure was designed by Widom/Wein & Partners and built by Morley Construction Co. It was developed in cooperation with the city's redevelopment agency in an area bisected by the Santa Monica Freeway.

The Los Angeles Urban League's automotive training center in the Crenshaw district has joined in a partnership with Philadelphia-based Pep Boys to provide instruction and employment for 300 people in the next year, officials announced Thursday. The automotive training center was established in 1992 after the Los Angeles riots in a joint venture with Toyota to teach skills that would lead to careers in the automotive industry.

A shootout Sunday between armored car guards and gunmen, one armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, left one bystander dead and at least three people wounded after a botched robbery outside a Van Nuys Costco store teeming with shoppers, authorities said. Panic-stricken customers, many with children, dived for cover in the pandemonium. Bullets shattered car windows 100 yards away.

Nestled on the windy plains at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains, once austere stretches of agricultural land have morphed into the country's most desirable industrial real estate market, and it is growing faster than any other industrial region in the U.S. Among the many merchants running large-scale operations now are such household names as Amazon.com Inc., Kohl's Corp., Skechers USA Inc., Mattel Inc. and Stater Bros. Markets. They come for vast warehouses - some are bigger than 30 football fields under one roof - where they can store, process and ship merchandise such as clothes, books and toys to ever more online shoppers and handle the rising flood of goods passing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

One of America's familiar stogies has been stubbed out. Since the Roaring Twenties, a beaming, bespectacled likeness of Emanuel (Manny) Rosenfeld has peered out from advertisements for the Pep Boys--Manny, Moe & Jack. And in the corner of Manny's mouth, for all these decades, was a fat cigar. This was, after all, an auto parts and service chain, and in the world of greasy overalls and grimy fingernails, a cigar is not out of place. Besides, Manny smoked one until his death in 1959.

Kasey Kahne gave himself a huge boost in the Chase for the Sprint Cup with a victory Sunday night in the Pep Boys Auto 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Kahne jumped from 11th to sixth in the Sprint Cup standings with the victory, allowing him to breathe a little easier going into next weekend's race at Richmond, Va., that will set the 12-driver field for the season-ending playoff. Kevin Harvick, who won the Nationwide race Saturday night, was in position for a weekend double until teammate Clint Bowyer spun with 15 laps to go, bringing out the last caution.

Construction has begun on a Taco Bell restaurant at 2800 Crenshaw Blvd., marking the transformation of an empty lot that had been a glaring reminder of the 1992 riots. The restaurant, scheduled to open April 5, is going up at the former site of a Pep Boys auto supply store. Pep Boys decided not to rebuild the store, which was partially burned during the riots. The store will create about 30 new jobs, officials said.