North Bay Business Journal

Relax. You’ve heard that word since the first time you got angry or upset. Or maybe it’s a word in your head that beacons reality. Pent up frustration, worry, or concern about the present or the future – or both – and nervousness about what’s about to happen in the world, at work, at home, or in your personal life. Relax is easy to say, hard to do.

June 15, 2012: The North Bay Business Journal honored fifteen north bay facility managers at the inaugural NBBJ Facilities Managers Recognition Awards at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek in Santa Rosa

MILL VALLEY — Therapydia, Inc., announced recently that it raised $5 million in venture funding to launch a website that will be “an online community” for physical therapists, which the Mill Valley-based startup said is one of the fastest growing areas of health care professionals.

SANTA ROSA — Construction of a 52-unit, $12.8 million affordable housing and commercial project in Downtown Santa Rosa is expected to go forward this September, funded by new financing and credits after project developers were unable to obtain highly sought-after affordable housing funds to begin construction in 2010.

NAPA — From a farmer of thousands of North Coast acres of winegrapes to producers of Napa Valley’s most prestigious wine brands to a broker of industry mergers and acquisitions, the speaker lineup for the Business Journal’s Impact Napa conference later this month includes major figures in Napa County’s wine industry.

SANTA ROSA – More small businesses in the North Bay and beyond are obtaining financing through the California Small Business Loan Guarantee Program, with lenders lauding it as a strong alternative to loan programs backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Dozens of Wells Fargo Insurance employees in San Francisco and San Carlos have defected to join a newly formed ABD Insurance and Financial Professionals, reclaiming the name and perhaps the culture of an influential brokerage that was acquired by Wells Fargo Insurance Services back in 2007.

Southwest Adult Day Services at Friends House is the full and proper name of the program that faces closure by Santa Rosa Community Health Centers. The name was incomplete in “Fight brewing over loss of adult care funding,” July 30, p. 1  

AMERICAN CANYON — The garbage collector for Napa and unincorporated areas of southern Napa Valley is putting the finishing touches on a new master plan for its main recycling and composting facility at the end of Tower Road, adding reuse of water, conversion of waste to wattage and reduction of compost gas emissions.

SUISUN CITY — Methane gas from the Potrero Hills landfill will soon be used to fuel state-of-the-art engines producing 9.6 megawatts of green, renewable electric power. This gas would otherwise be wasted and burned in the landfill flare or released into the atmosphere.

Green business column items: Fast-growing electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors Inc. plans to open a service center in Marin County. It’s part of a plan by the Palo Alto-based company to double the number of repair facilities — currently 18 worldwide, including a large new one at the Fremont factory — by year-end, according to the company’s July 25 report on its second fiscal quarter. …

Novato-based fuel-cell electric plant developer G3 Power Systems (g3powersystems.com) launched like lightning in 2010 with significant projects but now is seeking U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection as it liquidates. …

Santa Rosa-based electric vehicle maker Zap Inc. is in a legal tussle with the owner of the building where the company had been assembling and distributing vehicles that arrived from manufacturing plants in China. …

Nearly 50 percent of employers across the country are facing difficulty filling “mission-critical” positions, pointing to a labor shortage that experts say is having an impact in the North Bay and beyond, according to a recent survey.

Employers throughout the North Bay continue to rely on contingency workers, the result of a slowly rebounding economy that requires increased staffs but still has many companies reluctant to fully pull the trigger on hiring, employment experts said.

Unemployment rates in June increased in Sonoma, Solano, Marin and Napa counties from May and remained the same in Mendocino and Lake Counties, but the number of jobs in the region continued to rise, both from the month before and the previous June, according to the California Employment Development Department.

Marin County has learned some hard lessons about economic development, but we still have a long way to go. A step in the right direction is a new advisory group being convened to review planning processes and how the county interacts with Marin’s businesses and residents. This group was conceived by the county as a result of the Grady Ranch failure and years of contention between planners, applicants and Marin residents.

It lasts about 300 to 400 milliseconds. It occurs about 10 to 20 times per minute. Over the course of a day, excluding about 8 hours of sleep, it amounts to about an hour and 20 minutes on average, a fair chunk of time in our waking day. If you consider that the universe is about 14 billion years old, about 54,000 years would pass by during any given span of those milliseconds.
Some might argue that we can’t see anything during that period.

My company just lost a long-time senior manager. She was a very effective, successful, and well regarded leader. A member of her team has taken the management role on an interim basis. He’s a very capable “company man” but not necessarily the strong leader our company needs for this strategic leadership role. How can we make sure we find the right fit?

Gracianna Winery announced that it has opened its long-anticipated tasting room on the Miracle Mile on Westside Road in Healdsburg. …

San Rafael-based software developer City Chatter announced the launch of its mobile social network, which combines social discovery and real-time chat. …

Novato-based Biosearch Technologies, Inc. a leading supplier of sophisticated oligonucleotide components to the rapidly growing molecular diagnostics industry, announced that the company has launched catalogued assays for Stellaris RNA FISH. …

Osmosis Day Spa Sanctuary in Freestone completed its Kyoto-style Meditation Garden 10 years ago in September. …

Calistoga was found to be the third most expensive destination in the United States in terms of hotel costs in a new survey by CheapHotels.org. …

The Napa Sanitation District received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada for its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for fiscal year 2010–11. …

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

North San Francisco Bay Area events of interest to the business community