“As we near the 25th year of the founding of the Business Journal, we are significantly expanding the newspaper’s online presence through our new partnership with The Lamont Group, a local, family-owned business,” said George Economides, founder and publisher of the Long Beach Business Journal.

In addition to providing numerous stories, perspectives and photographs from each issue of the Business Journal and from weekly events, the site will serve as a resource guide for the business community with how-to articles, tips on a running a business, economic development information and much more. “In working with The Lamont Group, we have quite a few ideas that we plan to introduce in the coming months. We also want to gather input from our readers,” Economides said.

TLG is led by Evan Lamont, who comes from a public relations background and formerly worked for Frank Groff, Inc. Lamont wanted to start his own PR firm, and tapped into his entrepreneurial spirit to form TLG in 2006. Shawn Lamont, with 10 years of experience in the information technology industry, joined his brother in 2009 as a Web services specialist and developer.

The brothers work with their father, Ian Lamont, who serves as an advisor on business and client strategies. Ian Lamont is the former CEO of the Northern California division of Media News Group and served as publisher of the Oakland Tribune. Ian is also known for serving as publisher of the Long Beach Press-Telegram in the early 2000s.

The graphic design, online advertising, marketing and public and media relations agency has a variety of small- and medium-sized clients in Los Angeles and Orange counties, from businesses in the healthcare industry to restaurants to attorneys and many others. For more information about TLG, visit: www.TLGLB.com.

According to Evan Lamont, TLG hopes to address the changing media landscape and help transition the Long Beach Business Journal from a news group to a media group, “providing cutting edge social media and Web development.”

The Long Beach City Council voted recently to establish a joint use committee with the Long Beach Unified School District’s Board of Education members to pool resources and search for ways to save money.

“We’ve worked at having a formal relationship with members of the city council in the past, and we didn’t quite get there,” said Felton Williams, LBUSD board president, at the July 12 city council meeting. “But we can recognize the importance of having that kind of relationship, particularly in this day and time.”

The cash-strapped entities are to have representatives meet in a public forum, subject to the Brown Act, to review opportunities for joint use of land, environmental concerns, public safety concerns and other opportunities to accomplish their core missions with fewer funds. The item, presented to the council by 7th District Councilmember James Johnson, must be approved with a vote of the school board at a future meeting before the committee is formed.

“The reality is we all have less,” Johnson said. “The school district has less money to work on their mission. The city has less money to work toward our mission.”

Fourth District Councilmember Patrick O’Donnell, a teacher at Paramount High School, supported bringing the item to council. “It’s about keeping kids busy and saving money,” he said. “Certainly it’s using facilities, but it’s also where we can pool our resources and save money. We shouldn’t be afraid to have that conversation.”

The city is facing a multi-million dollar budget deficit for fiscal year 2012, beginning October 1, while LBUSD had to layoff nearly 800 teachers and staff this year to help balance its budget. Over the past three years, the school district has cut more than $200 million from its budget.

Once the committee is approved, the group is to be comprised of three city councilmembers, with a chair to be nominated by Mayor Bob Foster, and two school boardmembers. According to the item, any committee member would be able to place items for consideration by the committee on its agenda.

“Over the past several years, there have been many attempts to try to do this, and if you don’t engage or involve the school principals this endeavor is not likely to be very successful,” Foster noted. “I know in Long Beach it’s a pretty decentralized operation. They have to be part of it.”

Some joint use agreements already exist between the city and LBUSD, and Williams said synergy is important when looking at opportunities citywide. “A good school district does a number of things. It creates opportunities for businesses to come into the city,” he said. “It also creates opportunities for families to move into the city because it’s a well-functioning school district, and that’s the way we want to keep it.”

One-square mile area of Long Beach is being used as an evaluation area of the effectiveness of an eradication program to eliminate the infestation of the light brown apple moth. The evaluation area extends from Ocean Boulevard north to 8th Street and from Temple Avenue east to Ximeno Avenue.

With the support of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), California Department of Food and Agriculture (CFA) and the County of Los Angeles Agriculture Commissioner, an evaluation began on June 16 in which 100,000 to 500,000 sterilized moths are released weekly to disrupt the reproductive process of these pests. The process, called sterile insect technique, has been used to eradicate other invasive insects but is in the trial phases for eradicating the moth.

The light brown apple moth, a quarter-inch moth species, is a declared pest nationally and internationally. It was first discovered in California in 2007 and has threatened nurseries and agricultural crops in 20 counties. The moth, which is native to Australia, has been attacked over the years through quarantine measures such as aerial spraying of synthetic pheromones to disrupt mating and releasing wasps that kill the moth.

Long Beach was selected for an evaluation of the sterile insect technique because of the heavily concentrated infestation in the city, according to the supporting agencies.

Greg Simmons, an entomologist with the USDA, said the moth attacks a number of crops that make for crop losses and hurt the agriculture business. The moth does not make the crops toxic, but causes physical damage to fruits such as grapes, apples, pears, peach, citrus and berry crops.

“We’re trying to learn about how long the moths live, how long they fly, traps to count the numbers of moths and wild pest moths,” he said. “How we’re doing and how far they’re moving and how they’re living.” The sterile insect technique method, he said, could be used as a tool in addition with wasps or possibly a replacement for synthetic pheromone spraying.

A public open house event was held on June 8 at Recreation Park to inform community members of the evaluation. Simmons said only three residents attended, although notifications were placed on the door of the nearly 4,000 homes within the trial area. Representatives from Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe’s office, as well as representatives of elected officials in Long Beach were also in attendance, Simmons said.

by Sean Belk, Staff Writer

Negotiations are ongoing for the Port of Long Beach to relocate its near 400-member staff from its current location at the port to a new headquarters possibly somewhere in Downtown Long Beach. The move could be a “game changer” for the downtown office market, said real estate agents.

After a plan to build a new $295 million energy efficient, “green,” nine-story complex on a 17-acre site near the current headquarters was scrapped by Mayor Bob Foster last year, vetoing the line item from the budget, port executive staff floated several different proposals.

In closed session during the July 11 harbor commission meeting, Port Executive Director Dick Steinke discussed with commissioners and other negotiating parties the potential lease or purchase of space at One World Trade Center or Golden Shore property, or the possibility of space at the Union Bank Building or the City National Bank Building.

According to a staff report, the port has already approved the purchase of the 5.6-acre One World Trade Center parking lot, which has 659 parking spaces behind the building at the southeast corner of Golden Avenue and West Broadway. The $8 million sale and $200,000 deposit was negotiated by Cassidy Turley BRE Commercial.

It’s unknown at this time if the parking lot purchase is connected to moving into the 27-story One World Trade Center, said Art Wong, port spokesperson. But, he said the current real estate market for office space has provided for reasonable rates for the relocation. The port is looking for upwards of 200,000 square feet of space, in addition to conference rooms.

Meanwhile, the current 127,000 square-foot-building at 925 Harbor Plaza Dr. is in need of repairs, including elevators and seismic retrofits and port staff is “anxious” to move as soon as possible. “The air conditioner barely works on some days and our elevators are a gamble, Wong said. “Either we make some major repairs, which they indicated they don’t want to do, or else we move out of there.”

Toliver Morris, leasing director for the Landmark Square on Ocean Boulevard for Brookfield Properties, said the port move into One World Trade Center, which is 30 percent vacant, in addition to Molina Healthcare possibly purchasing the 15-story ARCO Center towers, which he said is currently “ongoing,” could alter the downtown office market entirely.

He added it could have a positive absorption ripple effect not only in Class A space, but other subsectors as well. “I think this could be a game changer for downtown,” he said. “If those two things happen, then Class A goes to 95 percent over night, because right now, occupancy is at only 85 percent. So you go to a quasi-healthy Class A market to a virtually full Class A market . . . and ultimately that would matriculate into the Class B and Class C.”

In response to the state budget cut of at least $650 million for the coming school year, the California State University system wasted no time to vote on a 12 percent tuition rate increase.

The tuition hike was approved at the July 12 meeting of the CSU Board of Trustees and takes effect this fall, bumping tuition costs at all 23 campuses to $5,472 for full-time undergraduate in-state tuition – an increase of $294 per semester on top of the added $222 per semester approved last November.

In addition, credential program participants will see an increase in tuition by $339 per semester, and graduate student tuition by $360 per semester, according to the CSU. One-third of the revenues generated from the 12 percent tuition increase are to be allocated for financial aid.

University officials indicated an increase prior to the state budget signing, warning that tuition costs would go up if the system cuts were more than the $500 million already adopted by the California Legislature in March.

The budget Gov. Jerry Brown signed calls for additional $100 million cuts to the CSU and the University of California each if revenue forecasts are not met by December. To address those potential cuts, university officials would have to look at making mid-year cuts as well.

If additional cuts occur, the university would be receiving the lowest level of state support since the 1997-1998 school year, even though the system serves 90,000 more students today, according to the CSU.

Allegiant announced that effective November 18, the low-cost carrier is moving two of its flights from Long Beach Airport (LGB) to Los Angeles International.

The airline is discontinuing nonstop flights from LGB to Bellingham, Washington, and Idaho Falls, according to an announcement released July 15. Allegiant continues with its flights to Las Vegas and Colorado Springs from Long Beach.

“Moving these flights from Long Beach to Los Angeles will give our customers additional options to fly to the heart of Los Angeles,” said Andrew Levy, president of Allegiant Travel Company, in a prepared statement. “They can continue to enjoy Allegiant’s popular, low-fare, nonstop flights and travel deals to and from Southern California.”

The announcement comes after Frontier Airlines officially ended its LGB service to and from Denver in April. Allegiant and JetBlue Airways picked up the two empty slots left by Frontier.

Allegiant also recently announced it has obtained approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin operating the Boeing 757-200 aircraft type, which it plans to use in its proposed service to Hawaii. The aircraft are expected to be introduced into its fleet in 2012.

– Sasha M., Australia

While it is no doubt theoretically possible to generate electricity by harnessing the kinetic energy of shifting tectonic plates below the Earth’s crust, pulling it off from a practical standpoint would be a real logistical challenge – not to mention prohibitively expensive compared to harnessing other forms of energy, renewable or otherwise.

Big earthquakes throw off vast amounts of energy. According to Beth Buczynski of the CrispGreen Web site, researchers have calculated that the January 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed upwards of 220,000 people in Haiti released as much energy as 31 of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. And the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck northeast Japan in March 2011 unleashed the equivalent of more than 15,000 Hiroshima bombs. That’s a lot of energy indeed.

“The total energy from an earthquake includes energy required to create new cracks in rock, energy dissipated as heat through friction, and energy elastically radiated through the earth,” reports the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program. “Of these, the only quantity that can be measured is that which is radiated through the earth.” Likewise, only this radiated energy – which is what shakes buildings and is recorded by seismographs – could be harnessed given the dedication of enough resources and the proper implementation of the right technologies.

Just how to harness tectonic energy is the big question. One way would involve stringing quartz crystals, which can transfer electricity via piezoelectricity, underground along known fault lines. When tectonic plates shift, the crystals could transfer the energy they pick up to a grid-connected storage medium for later use. But this is hardly practical, for one because earthquakes rarely happen in a predictable manner let alone in the exact spots where energy harvesters would have set up their gear. Also, fault lines tend to run deep below the Earth’s surface, so laying down a network of quartz crystals would involve mining out shafts and connecting them underground on a scale way beyond what humans have done to the present.

Regarding why Japan is so reliant on nuclear power despite the tectonic risks is a matter of economics. Lacking the rich oil, coal and other energy reserves of many other nations, Japan relies on nuclear power for some 30 percent of its electricity. Prior to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan was gearing up to boost its nuclear power reserves to account for half of its electricity needs by 2030. This increased reliance on nuclear power was set to play a big part in the country’s rollback of greenhouse gas emissions.

Prior to the earthquake and tsunami, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency had modeled a 54 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 2000 levels by 2050, and a 90 percent reduction by 2100, with nuclear energy accounting for upwards of 60 percent of the country’s total energy mix. Now it looks like the country may scale back its nuclear expansion plans, which in the short term will only increase its reliance on fossil fuels which will in turn drastically limit Japan’s ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, one would hope that turning away from nuclear expansion would spur the growth of alternatives such as wind power and other forms of renewable energy.

Contacts: CrispGreen, www.crispgreen.com; U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program, www.earthquake.usgs.gov.

(EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E – The Environmental Magazine, www.emagazine.com. Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com.)

by Tiffany Rider, Staff Writer

In an effort to reduce the number of neighborhood billboards and reduce blight in Long Beach, city staff is working to modernize the city’s existing regulations of the outdoor advertisements.

After a moratorium on updating city billboard regulations was enacted in December 2009 and extended in 2010 through this year, the Long Beach City Council can no longer defer the item and must update the policy by December 14. The focus of the updates, according to City Planning Administrator Derek Burnham, is to consider that more heavily traveled corridors are more appropriate areas for billboards than residential zones.

Current regulations only allow billboards in commercial and industrial zones, with restrictions. Long Beach Development Services Department Director Amy Bodek told the city council at its June 21 meeting that, “There are about 350 billboards in the city, most of which could not be developed today under our current regulations . . . They were built and installed when our regulations were completely different.”

Staff has put together a map that shows the locations of 120 residentially zoned billboards throughout the city eligible for amortization notice under state law. According to Burnham, the amortization process is done over a seven-year period.

“First and foremost, we wanted to try to reduce the number of billboards in this city, particularly in residential areas where I think one could argue they don’t belong there,” Burnham said. The Long Beach Redevelopment Agency has been aggressive to acquire billboards through acquisition of property to get them out of the inventory and also terminated billboard leases through various means, according to Bodek.

The billboard companies and property owners responsible for the 120 residentially zoned billboards were notified through certified mail by the city, where contact information was available, Burnham said.

Some billboard companies and property owners are challenging some of the billboards slated for amortization with the concern of losing potential revenues, while others are “eager to get rid of the billboard and are very supportive to amortize,” Burnham said. The Business Journal contacted the Los Angeles Clear Channel Outdoor offices for comment on the amortization process but did not receive a response by press time.

In a June 21 vote, the council directed City Manager Pat West to present updated billboard regulations to the planning commission that includes a cap-and-trade policy. This policy, as proposed, would exchange billboards that cause blight and are in neighborhoods for fewer modern electronic billboards.

“We would potentially allow the construction of a new billboard or the conversion of an existing static billboard into an electronic billboard in exchange for taking billboards out of a less desirable location,” according to Burnham. “And we’re evaluating the takedown ratio.”

Burnham said staff is determining an effective balance for the cap-and-trade policy based on other jurisdictions that have used this form of regulation successfully, and continues to monitor the processes taken on billboards in the cities of Los Angeles and Oakland as models. “If the takedown ratio is too high we won’t get any billboards taken down,” he said. “If it’s too low, we may allow too many of the electronic billboards or new static billboards.”

Staff has also been directed to explore possible revenue generating opportunities for hosting billboards on city property, the use of mobile billboards and issuing a conditional use permit where appropriate to provide additional discretional approval of the advertisements. An ordinance is being developed for presentation to council and for community review at a later date.

by Sean Belk, Staff Writer

The Long Beach and Los Angeles harbor commissions held a joint meeting July 7 to discuss implementing, developing and building a “zero-emissions” container movement system at the San Pedro Bay Ports and surrounding areas.

Through new and innovative technologies that have been planned for the last five years, the ports presented a “roadmap” for implementing a system that moves cargo efficiently while burning virtually no fossil fuels and having no tailpipe emissions

The goal of zero emissions is to further reduce emissions and health risk in the air basin and nearby communities. The ports have so far pioneered a Green Port Policy and Clean Air Action Plan, which have helped reduced pollution dramatically over the past decade, according to port staff.

The ports have been a test-bed for innovation, with the Technology Advancement Program (TAP), that allows new technologies to be developed on the working international trade environment. However, the goal is to transition from alternative fuels and hybrid technologies to fully automated fixed gateway systems or all battery electric trucks.

“We’ve spent many years as a leader in environmental stewardship and this is a continuation of the two ports working together,” said Dick Steinke, executive director for the Port of Long Beach. Steinke added the ports must stick to a roadmap to get to zero-emissions capabilities, which should be “feasible, cost effective and workable.”

Christopher Patton, assistant director of environmental management of the Port of Los Angeles, said the segments of port operations where technology is feasible and economically viable involve: short-range road container drayage, terminal container equipment and railroad locomotives.

However, outside of birth operations, such as implementing shore-power, there is no zero emissions capability for ships or harbor craft, he added. Patton pointed out that these two sources may “remain major contributors to health risks for years to come.” He added there is no “single universal zero emissions container system” that’s feasible.

Heather Tomley, environmental specialist for the Port of Long Beach, said servicing the multitude of destinations must be considered when changing to zero emissions for drayage.

Entirely changing the industry has “significant costs” and may be a “significant burden on the industry,” so the economically sustainable approach would be to transition through incremental implementation and where the system would be replaced over time, she added.

Through the TAP program, a Vision Motor Corp. electric truck with fuel cell range extender is being built and to be delivered in the next few weeks, beginning an 18-month demonstration for port related operations, Tomley said. Also, a “Next Generation” lithium ion on-road truck by Balqon is expected to be delivered and start its demonstration in the next few weeks.

Technologies for terminal equipment are to initially focus on electric rubber tire gantries (RTGs) and electric rail mounted gantries (RMGs), with zero emission terminal equipment. Both technologies are through Vision Motor Corp. and Balqon.

For locomotives, it’s much more cost effective, according to Tomley, to utilize existing infrastructure rather than changing to a new system because, on a national level, rail lines across the country would also have to upgrade. She said the port is expected to work collaboratively with rail lines and line haul operators on new technology.

One such technology that looks promising is Linear Synchronous Motors (LSMs), which involves a system adapted to the existing rail bed with a magnetic field propulsion system mounted between rails, she said. The system would have “no conflict with operation of conventional locomotives on the track,” she added. A proposal by San Diego-based General Atomics and the Center for Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies at California State University, Long Beach is undergoing development for proof and concept, Tomley said.

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