Robert W Miller

One of the original founders of Big 5 Sporting Goods stores 42 years ago is expected to announce today that he and his son will acquire a majority stake in the company for about $250 million. Robert W. Miller and his son, Steven G. Miller, will buy the region's largest sporting goods chain from Leonard Green & Partners, a Los Angeles buyout firm that has owned Big 5 since 1992.

One of the original founders of Big 5 Sporting Goods stores 42 years ago is expected to announce today that he and his son will acquire a majority stake in the company for about $250 million. Robert W. Miller and his son, Steven G. Miller, will buy the region's largest sporting goods chain from Leonard Green & Partners, a Los Angeles buyout firm that has owned Big 5 since 1992.

Concerning "A Latino Flowering" (by Scott Timberg, Sept. 15), please note that the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay is performing the challenging, rarely performed Harp Concerto of the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. The performance takes place Jan. 19, with soloist Marcia Dickstein, at the Norris Center for the Performing Arts in Rolling Hill Estates. As can be seen from our Web site (www.palosverdes.com/chamberorchestra), the group is the professional resident orchestra of the Norris Center, having won two recent NEA Awards under our music director, Frances Steiner.

Because the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay has had a woman conductor, Frances Steiner, as music director since 1974, we were particularly interested in Greta Beigel's Sept. 9 article "Music, Maestra." The award-winning, fully professional orchestra presents a five-concert subscription series as a resident company at the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts in Palos Verdes. Ms. Beigel should have included Frances Steiner's name among the several women she listed as pioneers in this field.

The South Bay Chamber Orchestra is the new name of the Baroque Consortium Chamber Orchestra, which was founded on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1973 as an amateur group and turned professional at the end of the decade. Robert W. Miller, president of the orchestra board, said the name was changed because the orchestra is the only "fully professional" orchestra in the South Bay and is working to become a regional ensemble.

Sometimes smaller is better. That's the philosophy of Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp., which owns 415 sporting-goods stores in 12 states, about half of them in California. The El Segundo company believes that operating a large number of easily accessible, smaller stores is more profitable than offering fewer big ones. The average size of its stores is 11,000 square feet, less than a quarter the size of its big-box competitors. "It allows us to be more convenient in metropolitan markets," said Steven G. Miller, Big 5's chief executive and son of co-founder Robert W. Miller.

MERYL STREEP, who co-stars with Clint Eastwood in "The Bridges of Madison County," and her husband, sculptor DONALD GUMMER, have sold their Brentwood home of five years for close to its $3.75-million asking price, sources say. The couple purchased the gated, contemporary Mediterranean for just under $3.5 million when she came to Hollywood for the first time to make a movie, which was the comedy "Defending Your Life," co-starring Albert Brooks.

The Baroque Consortium Chamber Orchestra, a professional ensemble that seems to have caught the fancy of local audiences, has a couple of new feathers in its cap as it prepares to open its fifth season Sunday at the Norris Community Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates. The group has become the resident orchestra at the Norris, where it has played for the past four years, and has received a grant from the California Arts Council.

There are plenty of excellent reasons to sell sporting goods in Southern California, but easy profit isn't one of them. White-collar unemployment has sapped some of the region's appetite for pricey exercise machines, and the five-year drought--despite the recent flooding and snow storms--has hurt sales of ski equipment, normally a lucrative corner of the business. Making things even tougher has been a proliferation of stores and their zest for price cutting.

The California economy, whose recovery looked so promising only a few months ago, has lately turned as cheerless as this spring's cloud-covered skies. The real estate market has gone into a ditch, with statewide home prices still falling and sales activity at a 10-year low, while unemployment remains stubbornly two percentage points higher than the national level.