Relocation Of Business

Jilted fans of runaway sports franchises -- long lost lovers of the Baltimore Colts, the original Cleveland Browns, the Los Angeles Rams and even the L.A. Raiders -- now, more than ever, I know your pain. The reason it feels as if I just swallowed a handful of hot embers? It's my hometown team, the SuperSonics of Seattle. I grew up watching them, me and my dad, up in the cheap seats, game after game.

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.

Vroman's lent book carts. The Los Feliz Library brought more carts and donated lanyards. Duttons sold them its phone system, a rack for greeting cards and lots of other supplies. Skylight Books was bursting out of its Vermont Avenue location and, one day last week, invited volunteers to help move a big chunk of its stock to the new addition down the street, called 1814. Being a neighborhood bookstore is part of what co-owner Kerry Slattery attributes to Skylight's success. It hosts readings, a new salon series and special events that keep people coming back.

On Monday, the first patients will walk into a gleaming new building in Boyle Heights, the new home of one of nation's largest public hospitals. Two dozen outpatient clinics are to open at the new Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, part of a decades-long effort to replace the Depression-era hospital that has long been the linchpin of the region's public health and trauma system. Monday's opening is the first step in a series of gradual moves into the new $1.

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.

Scrappy little Safari Sam's nightclub has shifted operations to downtown L.A. after club owner Sam Lanni lost his lease on the Sunset Boulevard location where he's been hosting a variety of pop shows since 2006. The new 700-capacity location is at the Regent Theatre at 4th and Main streets, and shows resume Friday with 45 Grave, followed Sunday and Nov. 2 by the Emergenza Festival. The Tiger Lillies appear Nov. 6, Junkyard will play Nov. 15 and Fastball arrives on Nov. 17. It will be billed as Safari Sam's at the Regent Theatre, and the club's all-ages policy will continue in the new space.

Seeking more space, Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry and his Gehry Partners LLP team will be relocating from the firm's 44,000-square-foot studio at 12541 Beatrice St. in Los Angeles to larger digs in El Segundo in early 2009, a spokeswoman for Gehry Partners confirmed Tuesday. The new space, occupying 75,000 square feet, is being developed by NSB Associates, which was also a partner in developing the Westside Beatrice Street location, part of a building last used by BMW to create prototypes and test cars.

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.