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After a century, concrete plant that helped build L.A. makes way for a deluxe tower

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After a century, concrete plant that helped build L.A. makes way for a deluxe tower

If the new apartment tower had been planned for another plot of land, chances are good the concrete plant in the middle of the city would have helped build it.

But, as it happens, the century-old facility on La Brea Avenue that has provided concrete for buildings and roads across the Los Angeles region sat where the tower is to go up.

Now, the West Hollywood facility has ceased operating in order to make way for a new apartment tower.

A worker sprays water to keep dust down at the Cemex concrete plant in West Hollywood. A 34-story apartment building is being planned for the site.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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The mixing plant that routinely filled fleets of trucks with ready-to-pour concrete stood out as an urban oddity in its final years, a dusty, noisy industrial yard on busy La Brea Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard, across the street from a shopping center with a Target store.

Straddling the border between West Hollywood and Los Angeles, it backed up against L.A.’s burgeoning Sycamore District that includes upmarket stores, restaurants and art galleries that have sprung up in the former industrial district.

The Cemex Hollywood Concrete Plant was one of the last industrial businesses operating in West Hollywood, said Jennifer Alkire, the city’s assistant director of community development.

The Cemex concrete plant in West Hollywood seen through a window

The Cemex concrete plant in West Hollywood was described as “the pioneer mixing plant in the West” in a 1924 issue of Concrete magazine.

(CIM Group)

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“It was definitely an unusual use, particularly as the city continued to develop and change and grow,” she said. “Obviously, it was there long before the city incorporated” in 1984.

A 1924 issue of Concrete magazine said that the operation at 1000 La Brea Ave. appeared to be “the pioneer mixing plant in the West,” the first of its kind offering “ready-mixed Portland cement concrete in quantities sufficient for a flagpole foundation or a 12-story building, and delivered right on the job when required.”

While concrete had been a preferred construction material for hundreds of years, it was 20th century advances in truck technology that made it practical to be delivered instead of mixed on-site.

By 1924, concrete from the La Brea plant was being used to pave streets in Los Angeles, the magazine said. Customers included the Standard and Union oil companies, along with the Famous Players-Lasky, Buster Keaton and Vitagraph movie studios.

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Ready-mix concrete plants continued to support development in the Southern California region during the building boom of the post-World War II era, according to research prepared for a draft environmental impact report on the planned development of the La Brea Avenue site. The plant there was upgraded in the 1930s and 1960s and operated continuously until its closure a few weeks ago.

As mechanical plants go, it was a pretty simple one. Nearly vertical conveyor belts lifted dry ingredients high up to be deposited into hoppers where they were mixed with water and then the wet concrete was poured into waiting trucks below. Concrete trucks routinely queued up on nearby streets before departing right on La Brea Avenue with their agitator drums turning.

Its last operator, Mexican multinational building materials company Cemex, declined to comment on the closure. The company’s landlord, Los Angeles developer CIM Group, said Cemex’s lease on the property was set to expire at the end of November and that it would clear the site of structures and vacate. By the end of October, most of the plant had been disassembled and carted away.

CIM Group is seeking approval from the city of West Hollywood to build a 514-unit apartment complex that would fill much of the former plant site and another parcel on La Brea Avenue. Called 1000 La Brea, it would rise 34 stories and include floor retail space for shops and restaurants.

It would have rooftop gardens, a swimming pool, fitness center, yoga room and library. There would be subterranean and above-ground parking, and at least 20% of the units are expected to be designated as affordable with subsidized rents.

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A rendering of an apartment tower

An artist’s rendering shows the apartment tower planned for the site of the Cemex concrete plant at 1000 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.

(CIM Group)

Shaul Kuba, co-founder of CIM Group, said he expects being situated on the edge of the upscale Sycamore district will help the apartment building land tenants. Neighbors would include Hollywood production facilities such as the former Warner Bros. studio now known as the Lot and other entertainment businesses, including broadcaster Sirius XM studios and Jay-Z’s entertainment company.

“This should become a place where people in the entertainment industry in the neighborhood can live and actually be close to their work,” he said. “The entertainment industry is very focused in this area right now.”

The east side of West Hollywood has evolved from being a collection of mostly low-rise commercial buildings, Alkire said, to including several multistory mixed-use residential buildings and neighborhood-serving retail properties such as the Movietown Square apartments and the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center.

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California cities need more apartments to meet housing goals, she said. “It’s definitely been made a priority by our City Council and by the state.”

CIM hopes to break ground on the project next year and complete it by 2028, Kuba said.

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Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

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Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.

In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”

“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”

Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.

In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.

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The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.

“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.

Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.

The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.

Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.

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Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.

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Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

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Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.

The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.

The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.

The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.

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It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.

However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.

Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.

Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.

“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.

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In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”

The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.

“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.

Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.

Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.

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Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.

The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.

Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.

A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.

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“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .

Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.

Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.

Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.

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How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

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How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.

But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.

While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.

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“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.

It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”

Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.

“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.

The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.

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Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.

Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”

Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.

Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.

“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”

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For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.

“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”

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