North Bay Business Journal

NOVATO — The Marin Community Foundation today said it will distribute to local health clinics $2 million in new grants from the Sutter Health Access to Care Fund.

MILL VALLEY — Thompson Dorfman Partners, LLC, today said it plans to spend $500 million in the next three years building multifamily and mixed-use developments in Northern California and hired a veteran of such projects to oversee the expansion.

The 14-year-old company hired Gillian Sutton Cho as vice president of development to manage acquisition and entitlement of projects, including almost 1,200 Bay Area units in design, entitlement or construction.

Novato-based 2K, a video-game publishing label of New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software, is expanding its North Bay development studios for the second time in the past several months, building a Petaluma motion-capture studio. …

Santa Rosa-based HybridCore Homes is garnering orders and building industry accolades for its factory-built room modules designed significantly reduce onsite construction time and trades scheduling. …

Spaceship-like Aptera 2e three-wheeled electric roadsters may begin rolling out of a downtown Santa Rosa industrial facility to buyers, now that the city of Santa Rosa has agreed to allow assembly of vehicles there. …

A nationwide group of BIM users, known as the BIMForum, is seeking industry comments by June 7 on a proposed set of standards for completeness and reliability of the models during design and construction. …

From Marin to Mendocino, current hospital projects represent at least $550 million worth of combined construction spending.

And it’s a number that will double if and when one of the largest projects — the $500 million rebuild of Marin General Hospital — gets off the ground.

Bob Glover oversees local-governmental affairs as part of his duties as executive officer of the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area.

He is set to be the keynote speaker at the Business Journal’s 2013 Construction Conference in Santa Rosa on May 15.

He spoke with the Business Journal about economic indicators that point to continued strengthening of homebuilding in the North Bay and the rest of the Bay Area as well as well as the headwinds builders continue to face seven years after the housing industry started a steep dive locally in shrinking sales, stalled and failed projects, and employment decline.

Offered for the first time this year, the eight-course Wine Industry Finance and Accounting certificate program takes many of the financial skills taught in Sonoma State’s full-blown wine business degree programs and breaks those topics out for focused instruction to a non-student audience.

Kaiser Permanente employees in California, including about 4,700 in the North Bay, voted to stay with their current trade union, rather than switching, according to results announced Thursday afternoon by the National Labor Relations Board.

NOVATO — Bank of Marin Chief Financial Officer Christina Cook to is leaving the bank to join Petaluma-based First California Mortgage Company. Bank of Marin has nearly doubled in size since Ms. Cook joined the bank as CFO and executive vice president in August of 2004, growing from $737 million in assets at the end of 2004 to $1.43 billion in assets as of March 31 of this year. The 35-year-old First California Mortgage has funded more than $200 billion in residential loans across the United States throughout its history.

Share your thoughts on this week’s NBBJ Pulse Poll question: “Do you think physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners and other mid-level health care providers can shore up the projected primary care physician shortage?”

As the Affordable Care Act looms large on the minds of health care providers, lawmakers and providers are increasingly calling for less stringent limitations on nonphysicians in order to meet demand spurred by the forthcoming influx of new patients.

NAPA — Sixty-four percent of registered nurses at Queen of the Valley Medical Center who voted on Tuesday whether to affiliate with the California Nurses Association, an affiliate of National Nurses United, chose to do so.

NOVATO — Raptor Pharmaceutical Corp. (Nasdaq: RPTP) today said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its drug designed for the treatment of nephropathic cystinosis, a rare and possibly life-threatening metabolic disorder.

It’s the first FDA-approved product for Raptor, started in 2005 by former executives and researchers of Novato-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical, itself a developer of treatments for rare diseases.

U.S. commercial launch is expected by July. FDA approval triggers the second of two $25 million payments to Raptor.

VACAVILLE — From WiFi and Bluetooth to the possible harvesting of solar power from space, the humble radio frequency wave is having something of a high-tech heyday.

Vacaville startup RF Biocidics is greening up the processing of fruits, nuts and potentially a wide range of foods by subjecting them to low-frequency radio waves.

Site preparation is set to begin in May for large shopping center and distribution warehouse projects in Petaluma and Fairfield: 346,000-square-foot Deer Creek Village and 791,000-square-foot Solano Logistics Center. …

Richard Coney, senior property manager in the Santa Rosa office of Keegan & Coppin, and Justin Barton, a property manager in the brokerage’s Larkspur office, earned the Certified Property Manager designation. …

After returning from the annual executive conference for Western Independent Bankers, a community bank trade group, Russell Colombo, president and CEO of Bank of Marin, said that leaders in the industry are starting to express greater optimism after a historically challenging economic period. …

Loans and deposits have grown at Bank of Napa, N.A., with net assets growing 8.2 percent over the course of a year and approaching $150 million as of March 31. …

Profiles of 2013 winners of the Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 Awards, listed alphabetically.

As Sonoma County’s political leaders continue to move forward with the process of setting up a county-wide public power agency, many in the business community are examining what the renewable energy-focused proposal would mean to their operations.

NAPA — Napa Valley hosted 2.94 million visitors in 2012, generating $1.4 billion in direct tourism spending, and more than three-quarters of them come for dining and wine tasting, according to results from two studies released Thursday.

NAPA — Fifty-four rental townhomes and a 124-unit apartment complex on the Sheveland Ranch property in south Napa sold to a San Francisco real estate investment firm for $39.5 million.

Health insurance brokers, employers and individuals are all eagerly awaiting full-scale implementation of the California Health Benefits Exchange, a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act, but it’s still anyone’s guess as to what it will look like.

Share your thoughts on this week’s NBBJ Pulse poll question: “Will the Affordable Care Act be ready to implement in California in January 2014?”

NOVATO — Bank of Marin Bancorp (NASDAQ: BMRC), parent company of Bank of Marin, today reported net income in the first three months of 2013 increased from the prior quarter and was level with income a year before.

The bank realized a net recovery on troubled loans for the first time in several years.