North Bay Business Journal

NORTH BAY — Lenders to the North Bay wine industry are following demand for capital as it ripples outward from a record-breaking grape harvest in 2012, after a boost in cash flow allowed many vineyards to pay down working capital and other business debt.

New California legislation known as the “homeowner bill of rights” helped the rate of new foreclosures to plunge in the North Bay and beyond in January, while home prices and sales in general continued a steady upward climb, according to reports released today by Irvine-based foreclosure tracker RealtyTrac and San Diego-based real estate data service DataQuick.

NORTH COAST — Many wine industry experts figured the 2012 winegrape harvest was going to be the biggest in several years and refill grower pockets after two smaller crops, but the first official tally of the crop released Friday suggests it was the biggest ever, even crushing the giant 2005 harvest in value and tonnage.

Featured in this spotlight on commercial lenders are executives at American River Bank, AltaPacific, Bank of America, Bank of Marin, Bank of Napa, Bank of the West, Comerica Bank, Exchange Bank, First Community Bank, First Northern Bank, Luther Burbank Savings, JP Morgan Chase, Mechanics Bank, Presidio Bank, Rabobank, Silicon Valley Bank, Sonoma Bank, State Assistance Fund for Enterprise Business and Industrial Development Corporation (SAFE-BIDCO), Summit State Bank, Travis Credit Union, U.S. Bank, Umpqua Bank, Union Bank, Warren Capital, Wells Fargo and Westamerica Bank.

Unemployment rates in the six North Bay counties edged upward or remained unchanged in November, according to state figures, as lower employment in farming and processing winegrapes after the harvest helped offset hiring in retail for the holidays.

Despite the dip in farming employment, Sonoma County continued to have among the fastest annual job growth in the state last month.

UKIAH — New life for the former Masonite plant in north Ukiah as a home for multiple manufacturers began early this month as a growing local maker of exhaust systems for personal watercraft and snowmobiles begins a $6 million project this year to triple the size of its production plant.

Securing enough North Coast grapes to supply growing consumer demand for wine is spurring growth in staffing and services among some North Bay law firms that serve the industry, all of which is helping the legal industry rebound after several years of static business.

The California Health Benefits Exchange, now known as Covered California, selected Pedro Toledo to serve on its marketing, outreach and enrollment assistance advisory groups. …

Aaron Poole has accepted the position of Mendocino regional controller for Howard Memorial Hospital and Ukiah Valley Medical Center. …

The Petaluma Health Center added four new members to its board of directors: Pedro Toledo, Gloria Robinson, Joe Tambe and Georgina Warmoth. …

Stephanie Cunningham joined Sonoma-based Bolt Staffing, where she will take over responsibility for sourcing and placing candidates for clients looking to bring experienced new people into their organizations. …

Schweiger Vineyards in St. Helena announced the promotion of James Eyer to general manager. …

David Sandri has joined Compliance Connection in Santa Rosa as a compliance specialist. …

The McWilliams family, owners of Arista Winery in Healdsburg, appointed Matt Courtney as winemaker. …

Unemployment rates in the six North Bay counties edged upward or remained unchanged in November, according to state figures released this morning, as lower employment in farming and processing winegrapes after the harvest helped offset hiring in retail for the holidays.

Despite the dip in farming employment, Sonoma County continued to have among the fastest annual job growth in the state last month.

UKIAH — Designed to deliver much more than library services, the Mendocino College Library Learning Center, completed this fall, is a new central pivot point for a campus that had long outgrown the cluster of portable buildings that have sat at the site since the permanent campus was established in 1985.

NORTH BAY — The North Bay housing market continues to show improvements, including rising home prices and a decrease in the number of new foreclosures, according to reports released today by market tracking firms RealtyTrac in Irvine and San Diego-based DataQuick.

PETALUMA — Redwood Community Health Coalition recently took part in a pilot project testing a mobile health application that enrolls patients in public assistance programs, a potentially pivotal development for the public health sector. The accelerating convergence of mobile technology and health care will likely open new avenues of access to underserved populations, which could in turn help states with implementing key pieces of health care reform, officials said.

Proposed state regulations on North Coast vineyard erosion are moving toward draft rules to be considered for adoption in 2013. Through Jan. 2, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board staff will be taking comments on a draft conditional waiver of waste-discharge requirements for vineyard properties in the Napa River and Sonoma Creek watersheds and an associated draft document on environmental affects of the waiver program. Those drafts were released Nov. 16, and the board is set to consider them at a public hearing set for Feb. 13 in Oakland.

Commercial real estate leases and sales in the north San Francisco Bay Area

Unemployment rates for North Bay counties were largely unchanged in October from the month before, but Sonoma County continued to lead all of California in job growth, helping the entire North Bay grow by 2.5 percent from the previous October, according to state figures released this morning.

NORTH BAY — Foreclosure rates are falling across the North Bay, California and the United States, according to a report today from Irvine-based real estate data tracking and listing firm RealtyTrac.

A North Coast winegrape season that was not too hot, too cold or too wet combined with steady demand for grapes and wine following two short crops led to a rare conjunction in recent years, possibly the most tonnage since the 2005 peak year and a number of wineries eager to find room to buy as much as they could.

Commercial real estate leases and sales in the north San Francisco Bay Area

The board of directors of Hennessy Advisors, Inc. declared a quarterly dividend. …

Julie Jones, author of Estate Documents Organizer, and Daren Blonski, financial adviser with Edward Jones in Sonoma, will hold two Tuesday estate-planning workshops. …

Bay Area Development Co. completed U.S. Small Business Administration 504 funding for trade journal Vineyard Winery & Management in Santa Rosa. …

Redwood Credit Union is accepting contributions to the Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund to directly assist those affected by Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. …

Dominican University of California in fall 2013 will launch a master’s of science degree program in clinical laboratory science (CLS) with an emphasis in molecular diagnostics. …

Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT) completed its acquisition of China Kanghui Holdings (NYSE: KH), a major provider of orthopedic devices in China. …

American Institute of Architects Redwood Empire chapter presented its design awards for a number of North Bay projects on Oct. 27 in the Kaiser Air hanger at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport. …

Novato commercial solar power products and services provider SPG Solar completed a cutting-edge solar tracking system at a wastewater treatment plant in Williams. …

ST. HELENA — Adventist Health’s St. Helena Hospital Napa Valley campus is in the midst of a $20 million upgrade that will both add capacity and bring much-needed enhancements to patient care, hospital officials said.