The Tribune from San Luis Obispo, California • 8

Sun Lulu Obispo CounLy (Calif) TELEGRAM-TRIBUNK tetf'-jtA-H'H'tu- A-8 Tuesday May 5 1992 Business Can LA ghetto rise from ashes? Parental firm woes push KSBY toward Chapter 1 1 eration never panned out and Gillett stopped making debt payments in August 1990 Gillett appeased creditors with a promised sale id WMAR-TV in Baltimore for $1547 million to Scripps Howard Broadcasting Co a subsidiary of the Telegram-Tribune's parent company EW Scripps But Scripps Howard balked at the deal and frustrated creditors filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Gillett Even though Gillett eventually sold WMAR to Scripps Howard for $125 million the deal came too late Gillett Holdings succumbed to bankruptcy on June 25 1991 less than two weeks after the sale of WMAR was announced Initially the bankruptcy filing only covered the Denver parent company But most id Gillett's many subsidiaries including KSBY will now follow their parent into court McGillen said she has no idea when KSBY will emerge from bankruptcy proceedings KSBY-TV overwhelmed by the woes of its parent company will soon file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Cindy Lindsay McGillen general manager of the San Luis Obispo station said the filing is a purely legal maneuver that will have absolutely no effect on the company's employees suppliers or programming filing is made to protect KSBY from possible legal entanglements relating to the Chapter 11 filing of its McGillen said The filing mil be made sometime in the next two weeks in US Bankruptcy Court in Denver KSBY was bought in 1987 by George Gillett a Denver-based entrepreneur who accumulated more than $1 billion in debts buying five television stations two ski resorts and a meatpacking company Gillett financed the purchases through the sale id junk bonds Rosy revenue projections for his TV stations and meatpacking op LOS ANGELES (McClatchy) Quintus White stood in front of his business Big Red Seafood and watched as columns of smoke drifted across the dark afternoon sky shop escaped the frenzy iff looting and violence that destroyed as many as 10000 businesses caused $550 million in property damage and left 47 people dead His thoughts were on the poor people many of whom are black who face an uncertain future as their economic foundation crumbles from the rioting Where will mothers buy milk now that stores have been turned to rubble? Where will the ride and elderiy get medication? Where will people buy clothing? Where will they cash their checks? When will the power be restored? And where will people work? Hoards of black people had turned on their own neighborhoods committing what White perceives as economic suicide Once again blacks who are angry with a nation they believe has mostly ignored them had unleashed a fury of violence on themselves they did was wrong" White lamented this place will never be the same" If history is a gauge analysis may be correct Three decades after the Watts riots the community is still struggling to recover as are other cities plagued with civil unrest Detroit Newark and Washington DCL also are fighting for survival some 30 years after destructive uprisings Some of the scars are physical the burned-outbuildings the rows of vacant lots where homes and businesses once stood But there are other remnants of unrest areas forever scorned by businesses because they are considered too dangerous and unworthy of investment And that some fear is what awaits the people here track record on these things all that good" according to Chris Walker senior research associate at the Urban Institute a non-profit think tank in Washington DC few of these areas ever get turned Henry Cisneros a national leader in the Latino community and former mayor of San Antonio also offered a bleak forecast going to take years for this community to recover" said Cisneros who was invited by Mayor Tom Bradley to help the city pick up the pieces very thing this community needs is jobs and what this represents is jobs and opportunities lost what can you do except just start over? what these people are Former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth was later tapped by Bradley to head a nonprofit corporation to help rebuild the riot torn Copeland stores damaged in rioting Copeland's Sports stores in Los Angeles and San Francisco were damaged during riots that rocked both cities last week The San Luis Obispo-based chain's store on Fifth and Market streets in San Randsco was especially hard-hit according to an article in San Randsco Chronicle Tom Copeland co-owner of the chain was quoted by the Chronicle as saying the store sustained has been boarded up and wfil remain closed indefinitely really so sad People are just taking advantage of a tragic the newspaper quoted Copeland as saying Windows in the Westwood store were smashed but an employee there said the store was going to open for business Monday Tom Copeland and his brother Jim Copeland own 49 stores that extend throughout the West The chain was founded in 1956 in a shoe store near the comer of Mom and Higuera streets in San LuisObispo The headquarters and main distribution warehouse iff Sports are still in San Luis Obispo Neither of the Copeland brothers could be reached for comment the fate of Watts In feet some national experts believe a well-orchestrated plan that taps public and private resources will be necessary And those resources will have to be freed from governmental bureaucracy and funneled directly to groups capable of leading the rebuilding movement they say Even so there is no guarantee South Central Los Angeles will ever bounce back prognosis is not good" Greg Carter a sociologist who specializes in the 1960s riots said earlier this week are talking about an area that is very very poor has few resources What little is there when gone hard to But residents vow to hit the streets with the same fervor as the looters and plant the seeds iff a brighter future going to take said Georgia Washington a 50-year-old owner of a pest control business on Western Avenue a business spared onfy because she stood guard with a handgun and sledgehammer Real estate loans still i likely to be hard to find Associated Press Mayor Tom Bradley has faith that Peter Ueberroth can aid the LA business climate community Ueberroth has offered no specific plan but said the effort would require concerted commitment from the community government and private sector starting in the hole here" said Ueberroth flanked by Gov Pete Wilson and Mayor Tom Bradley at a City Hall guarded by National Guard troops with rifles and flak jackets charge will be chairman of a nongovernmental public benefit corporation called Rebuild LA the mayor announced The corporation has yet to create a board or a staff see it coming said Shirlene Santiago a 20-year employee up to us to pull it back Others do not share optimism Many residents believe rioters and looters have destroyed the very fabric of the community necessary for day-to-day survival leaving neighborhoods vulnerable to years perhaps decades of poverty and crime fools have destroyed themselves" said Ella Mae Strother 33 pointing to heaps of concrete and twisted steel that were once a gas station burger stand doughnut shop and liquor store on four adjacent corners in South Central Los Angeles Some expressed fears that without substantial government aid and private investment poor communities hit hardest by the violence will share so news to convey to real estate developers about the economy The good news he said is that inflation seems to be on a significant downward trend and the UJS economy is at the beginning of a sustained expansion is rethinking their investment in real estate Investors worry whether we have yet seen the Dale Walker Wells Fargo Bank Japanese firms facing more patent right suits SAN FRANCISCO (Scripps) hard to persuade banks and insurance companies to finance real estate deals these days and the situation expected to change anytime soon That was the somber wanting issued by industry experts who spoke last week at a real estate forecast conference sponsored by the California Building Industry Foundation and Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics is rethinking their investment in real said Dale Walker executive vice president id Wells Fargo real estate group worry whether we havie yet seen the Walker said-real estate deals must be to win financing from banks today Luis Belmonte a partner in AMB Properties said developers would have to start courting money from new sources as the old ones dried up They win be successful he said if their projects offer an attractive return on the investment As an example of a new funding source Belmonte cited the California Public Employees Retirement System which announced early this year that it would provide up to $350 million in construction financing for entry-level single-family homes the first large pension fund in the country to come forward with such a plan Others are expected to follow Robert Parry president of the Federal Research Bank of San Francisco said he had both good and "contracts to pay royalties to the Britons and Swiss According to Japan Machinery Association sources over the past decade there were 112 cases of patent suits against Japanese firms filed with the US Federal District Court and the International Trade Commission companies were major acquirers of industrial technologies developed hi the United States Now an increasing number of UJS firms are charging that the Japanese infringed patent rights The first US-Japan patent dispute came in July 1991 when Texas Instruments Inc and Fujitsu Ltd sued each other over the patent for integrated circuits of a computer chip In a highly-publicized case the UJS electronics firm Honeywell Inc filed a complaint against Minolta Camera over its auto-focus camera technology Ultimately Minolta agreed to pay Honeywell $130 million to settle the suit Among other major patent complaints pending is a for royalties by Loral Fairchild Corp from a number of Japanese camcorder makers using its charge-coupled By Masaru Sugbnoto Deutsche Presse Agentur TOKYO UJL and European concerns are stepping up their complaints against Japanese firms which have used technological processes developed in the West to make a fortune on global markets a patent is the way one industry source described the dispute in which Japanese firms have been put on the defensive The sources say the issue boils down to a question of whether the Japanese companies have infringed intellectual property rights and paid sufficient royalties due Western firms for their know-how American firms and technology patent-holders are stepping up their offensive to sue for royalties from Japanese firms Over the past decade Japanese device technology Also Gilbert Hyatt a developer of microprocessor knowhow is seeking payments of patent fees from Toshiba Corp and other major Japanese companies European concerns meanwhile also have started to file complaints against Japanese firms charging them with theft of their patents iff the liquid crystal displays one of the fastgrowing electronics markets the economic newspaper Nihon Keizai reported The British Defense Ministry and Asea Brown Boveri of Switzerland have demanded royalties from 10 Japanese electronics firms for LCDs used in computers and television tubes the paper said Among the Japanese companies from which royalties are being sought three Toshiba Sharp and Kyocera have already concluded He noted that lower interest rates had breathed some life into residential construction However Parry said the expansion was taking place at an compared with those that followed earlier recessions as a result iff the struggle to balance state and federal budgets the glut of empty office buildings that will take years to fill including 9 million square feet iff new office space in Los Angeles and the dampened foreign demand for US goods among trading partners like Japan and Germany which are experiencing their own economic slowdowns San Francisco Examiner In addition there were 281 cases in which both sides reached out-of-court settlements In 219 of the cases Japanese firms were forced to pay reconciliation royalties industry sources say Such developments have forced Japanese manufacturers to start drafting defensive strategies Some firms are revamping their patent departments Scripps Howard News Service Fax sends bike messengers the way of Pony Express panies suddenly aware their clients were whizzing down Seventh Avenue 'in mid-day traffic jacked up the premiums Wyatt who broke into the business as a bike messenger a decade ago remembers paying $500 to insure all his riders when he opened his business in 1984 His cost for liability insurance this yean $150000 The best and the boldest could pull In $1000 a week by ripping through 40 deliveries a day A $400 week is a good five days in 1992 said bicyclist LeRoy Barker of the Exodus Messenger Service was an outlaw industry for a few said Bob Wyatt owner of Orbit light Speed after a few (injury) payoffs the insurance companies learned going an And the politicians learned and comp Politicians began enforcing a law requiring the bikers to become employees rather than work as independent contractors Insurance com- bicycle messenger in which corrupt options trader Kevin Bacon found redemption on a biqyde seat One of the characters on tiie TV series Wars" is a messenger A real-life messenger Nelson Vails went on to win a silver medal as a track cyclist in the 1984 Olympics Bicyde messengers even had an effect on fashion The skin-tight streamlined bicycle shorts seen now in fitness centers and basketball arenas were first brought from biqy-cle races to the city streets by the messengers But many of the messengers ride no more left behind in the 80s with leveraged buyouts and Duran Duran In 1987 there were an estimated 5000 of them But the bad economy deflated a lot of bicycle tires Sixty-five messenger companies have gone out of business since 1990 only about L500 bicycle messengers still have steady employment said Goodman NEW YORK CAP) Once they were urban fixtures letter-lugging road warriors flashing through traffic on two wheels Now bicycle messengers are becoming scarce unable to outrace technology insurance and the economy still a few daredevils out there but not many" said Bill Goodman executive director of the AggorUtinn of MfssffngffT More than 20 percent of New York 305 messenger companies went out of business during the past two years continuing a decline that began several years ago with the fax machine explosion Goodman said In the heyday of the Spandex-dad kamikazes bike messengers were as common as yellow cabs in Manhattan flitting in and out of traffic within inches of bumpers and door handles terrorizing pedestrians and defying delivery trucks A movie glorified the life of the Tired of BIRTHMARKS add SPIDER VEINS tattoos AGE SPOTS? call 434-2876 forappt Laser Surgery Center of Central California Phone lor FREE Refinancing or Purchase Analysis Arroyo Grande05att Kmart Shopping Center )352 Madonna Rdf 4450 El flamino Real 1 473i0604lSr4At2631 6'g 1r 860-225 REPRESENTATION KFOIE NIONAL KVENUE SBMCE 4 FMNCHISE TAX BOMO AUNTS COLLECTIONS (NEGOTIATE PAYMENT WANS) APPEALS ROLFPOKOW8KLEA sum 6 73i menu blo mmcio OneLessThingTb Pack NextTrip ADEHA CONNECTION Next time fly the Delta Connection SkyWest to LA for easy connections to Delta and the world And put 1000 miles on your Delta Frequent Flyer account not on your car For 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