Relocation Of Business

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has leased Creative Artists Agency Inc.'s former Beverly Hills headquarters, an I.M. Pei building that has a mural by Roy Lichtenstein in its 57-foot-high atrium. The group, a venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann, will move in by the end of the year, Michael Ovitz, a founder of the Hollywood talent agency and building owner, said this week at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Sony BMG spokesman John McKay declined to comment.

Looking down from his building's 87th floor at the glittering signs of multinational banks along the river here, Fan Dizhao declared confidently that Wall Street's reign as the world's No. 1 financial hub is coming to an end. The United States is grappling with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but these are go-go days in China. Venture capital, private equity and foreign direct investment are at all-time highs.

Beckman Coulter Inc. said it would close its Palo Alto operations by 2008 and move most of the work to Indianapolis. About 220 people work at the Palo Alto site, most of which deals with making centrifuges used in laboratory equipment, the Fullerton-based company said. The action would have no effect on Beckman Coulter's 2006 results, the company said.

Acclaimed author Luis J. Rodriguez and his wife, Maria, had a dream of bringing art and culture to a community long ignored by theaters and bookstores. So they took out a second mortgage on their San Fernando home and began renting what was once office space in a small strip mall. Thus was born Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural in Sylmar.

The Copacabana, the famed New York nightclub that entertained the smart set with a young Frank Sinatra in the '40s and was the inspiration for Barry Manilow's signature song in the '70s, is looking for a new home again. Its third incarnation, on a commercial block on West 34th Street, has been condemned by the city to make way for an extension of a subway line. Owner John Juliano doesn't have a lease signed on a new location but has until July 1 before he has to be out.

An icon of Little League fields across America is taking its bat manufacturing business to China, cutting 250 jobs in Van Nuys in the process. Van Nuys-based Easton-Bell Sports Inc., which produced 2 million aluminum bats a year at its 130,000-square-foot plant, is outsourcing its manufacturing operations to "stay one step ahead," Ken Waltrip, Easton's vice president of manufacturing, said in a statement Friday. "We are sad to see this day come."

All aboard! Allied Model Trains is leaving the station. This week, one of the nation's largest model train stores is closing its longtime home in Culver City: a half-block-long replica of Los Angeles' Union Station. And fading along with it, says owner Allen Drucker, is the model train industry. "It's just a dying hobby," said Drucker, 58. "We probably have another good 15 years." Drucker will hang up his cap after 32 years of running a miniature railroad hub.

Sony Pictures Imageworks, one of Hollywood's leading visual effects companies, has decided to move more than 100 jobs from Culver City to New Mexico. Imageworks will open a 100,000-square-foot satellite facility by next spring within Albuquerque Studios, a new production studio near the city's airport. Sony executives and New Mexico officials confirmed the move Wednesday in advance of a formal announcement expected today.

A small Santa Ana real estate company is taking over venerable commercial real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis Co. and will move the firm's headquarters from Chicago to Santa Ana. The merger announced Tuesday with NNN Realty Advisors Inc., a privately held real estate services and management company in Santa Ana, marks the latest consolidation in the increasingly competitive industry. "Companies need to be bigger to compete now," said real estate analyst Craig Silvers of Bricks & Mortar Capital.

Hanesbrands Inc. plans to cut 5,300 jobs, or 11% of its workforce, and close nine sewing and assembly operations as it moves production to lower-cost sites in Asia and Central America. The underwear and apparel maker, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., said the plants to be closed were mostly in Mexico and the Dominican Republic.