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L.A. County supervisors seek aid for hundreds of workers affected by Phillips 66 refinery closure

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L.A. County supervisors seek aid for hundreds of workers affected by Phillips 66 refinery closure

With a major oil refinery in Wilmington and Carson scheduled to close next year, Los Angeles County officials are looking to shore up resources for hundreds of workers who will be left without jobs.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a motion Tuesday asking county staff to work with local partners such as the city of Los Angeles and the South Bay Workforce Investment Board to develop a plan to provide hiring fairs, training and other job placement resources for affected workers.

Oil giant Phillips 66 announced in October that the century-old complex, which sprawls across 650 acres and produces about 8% of the state’s gasoline, would cease operations late next year. Its closure will affect some 600 employees and 300 contract workers that keep its operations running.

Supervisor Janice Hahn said at the meeting that more than half of the affected workforce is Latino and includes skilled workers such as operators, welders, engineers and safety compliance experts that would bring “years of specialized training and certifications” to other jobs. She said they should receive support to help them make the transition to similar jobs in renewable energy, infrastructure development and advanced manufacturing.

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“This is a time the county needs to lean in and support them as they face this abrupt transition,” Hahn said.

Supervisors Hahn and Holly Mitchell introduced the motion, which also asks various departments to identify career pathways for “hard-to-hire” skilled trade positions within the county itself.

“We have the responsibility to ensure that displaced workers can smoothly transition … not just by partnering with the private sector but also by opening up doors here at the county,” Mitchell said at the meeting.

The county’s Director of Economic Opportunity has 60 days to report back to the board with an action plan.

The announcement of the pending closure came amid community concerns of harmful emissions and high pollution levels. Mark Lashier, chairman and chief executive of Phillips 66, said in an October news release that the long-term sustainability of the operation was “uncertain and affected by market dynamics.”

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“We understand this decision has an impact on our employees, contractors and the broader community,” Lashier said. “We will work to help and support them through this transition.”

The closure will leave the state with eight major refineries, three in the Bay Area and five in Southern California, operated by Chevron, Valero and others.

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New tactic to close Aliso Canyon gas storage facility: Switch more neighbors to electric appliances

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New tactic to close Aliso Canyon gas storage facility: Switch more neighbors to electric appliances

Ever since a historic, methane-spewing blowout in October 2015, local lawmakers, residents and activists have been pressuring state regulators and officials, including the governor, to close the Aliso Canyon gas storage field.

The leak at the Porter Ranch facility lasted for 121 days and pumped more than 100,000 tons of methane and other chemicals into the sky. It was the largest gas leak in U.S. history, and neighbors complained of headaches, nausea and other symptoms. Meanwhile, the facility, owned by Southern California Gas Co., remains open.

Now, activists and supporters are changing tactics. Instead of focusing primarily on the facility’s closure, they also want residents to adopt green technologies, and they’re using a hefty SoCalGas settlement to help make it happen.

At a news conference Wednesday in front of the gas company’s regional headquarters in Chatsworth, state Sen. Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) and state Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth) implored community members to hasten Aliso Canyon’s closure by consuming less gas and turning to electric appliances.

The duo, along with community activists, announced that funds from the $71-million settlement between SoCalGas and its regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission, would be used to further those efforts as the commission deliberates on a plan to potentially close Aliso Canyon in the distant future.

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“We still believe the facility can be closed,” Stern said, “but this funding is really designed to help average homeowners, people who send their kids to school in the Valley, take the closure of Aliso Canyon into their own hands.”

The funding is expected to be broken up into four chunks: $40 million to push for replacement of home and water heaters now powered by natural gas, $15 million to make schoolyards greener; $14 million to combat extreme heat and aid community resilience programs, and $2 million for community outreach and decarbonization education.

“This is a significant step forward on delivering some level of justice and creating healthier and more sustainable communities and futures for the communities that were impacted by the Aliso Canyon disaster,” Schiavo said.

The $40 million will go toward a statewide program that promotes the use of electric residential heat pumps for space and water heating. Although every homeowner within SoCalGas is eligible for a $1,000 rebate, the program will give special priority to those in the Aliso Canyon-impacted communities of Porter Ranch, Granada Hills, Northridge, Chatsworth, North Hills, Canoga Park, Reseda, Winnetka, Lake Balboa, Van Nuys and West Hills.

“Heat pumps can create safer and healthier homes and communities and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and the market is increasingly ready to meet the rise in demand,” Robin Tung, associate director of communications for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, said at the news conference. The group is one of several working with the affected Aliso Canyon community pushing for electric over gas options and appliances.

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All other monies will only be available specifically to Aliso Canyon-impacted communities.

As for green schoolyards, the $15 million will be aimed at increasing green space, reducing asphalt and blacktops for affected cities, counties, school districts, special districts and nonprofits. The $14 million in extreme heat aid will support senior community centers with adequate and efficient air conditioning.

The settlement funding these endeavors is separate from a $1.8-billion agreement settlement between Aliso Canyon neighbors and SoCalGas in 2021, or other payments and fines paid by SoCalGas and its parent, Sempra Energy.

SoCalGas spokesperson Chris Gilbride, who was at the news conference, did not offer a direct comment on the settlement.

He did note that SoCalGas “share[s] the commission’s view that Aliso Canyon is a necessary part of California’s energy infrastructure today.”

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California Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo listens as California Sen. Henry Stern speaks about the $71-million settlement check presented to members of the communities affected by the Alison Canyon Well failure in front of the Southern California Gas Company in Chatsworth on Wednesday.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The news conference comes after the CPUC released a proposal Nov. 13 that could lead to closing Aliso Canyon years from now. Local activists and politicians criticized the plan, saying it didn’t provide a fast enough or clear enough timeline to shut down the site.

The proposal calls for moving ahead with closing the site once Southern California’s demand for natural gas declines to a level at which peak demand can be served without Aliso Canyon.

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According to the plan, the CPUC would initiate proceedings to review and potentially close the facility only when the peak demand forecast for a date two years in the future is below 4,121 million metric cubic feet per day.

Peak demand, currently forecast at 4,618 million metric cubic feet per day, is expected to drop to 4,197 million in 2030, according to the CPUC.

Stern estimated the earliest the facility could be closed under the proposal would be 2039.

Activists such as Matt Pakucko, president of the advocacy group Save Porter Ranch, which has fought to close the storage facility since shortly after the leak, said SoCalGas and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s framing on the issue has always been wrong.

“This isn’t an energy issue, it’s a health issue,” Pakucko said.

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The closure plan will be discussed at the commission’s Dec. 19 meeting in San Francisco. The public can attend in person or virtually.

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On a Crenshaw Boulevard corner, old gives way to new, but it stays in the family

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On a Crenshaw Boulevard corner, old gives way to new, but it stays in the family

The corner lot on Crenshaw Boulevard and 54th Street looks like any other construction site. Inside the chain-link fence encircling the property, an excavator last week was moving a pile of rubble — the last remains of an old building that had been demolished to make room for something new.

But the mundane scene belied an unusual story in Los Angeles real estate: Instead of selling it, a Black family with deep roots in South L.A. chose to hold on to a property they’ve owned for decades and develop it themselves into a $24-million apartment and retail building.

They’ll mark their progress with a formal groundbreaking ceremony Thursday, a rare instance of a local, minority property owner participating in the redevelopment of their neighborhood, which had long been overlooked by conventional developers. In keeping a seat at the table, they are bucking the norms for how development in L.A. typically is done, in which owners sell to outside developers looking to capitalize on the rising fortunes of once-neglected historic neighborhoods.

But even with a train stop for Metro’s new light rail K line nearby, funding for the project was hard to come by. It took years of effort before siblings Jamial Clark and Bridgette Reed, who inherited the property from their parents, could start turning their mother’s former hair salon and wig shop property into a six-story building with 48 apartments and perhaps a small grocery store in the first-floor retail space.

The grind, they said, has been worth it. Their parents, Henry and Lucretia Clark, scraped together money in 1995 to buy the building and the siblings didn’t want to let go of it. Perhaps, they said, they will provide a road map to others who own properties in evolving neighborhoods near the many new transit lines being built and planned by Metro.

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Co-developer Kacy Keys, left, and Clark family members Bridgette Reed and brother Jamial Clark at the site.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“There are a lot of Black-owned properties up and down Crenshaw,” Reed said. “We just want to encourage other families to do the same thing and not sell out to these developers who are coming in and actually pricing us out of our own communities.”

Key to getting their project underway was teaming with developer Kacy Keys, who has spent nearly three decades building commercial projects including apartments, offices and stores. She heads Praxis Development Group, which will have an equity stake in the project, which is named Clark on 54th.

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“We were responsible for playing the developer role,” Keys said of her company, such as getting city construction approvals, overseeing the design, hiring contractors and finding financing. The Clarks “agreed to contribute their land into a joint venture with us.”

Both Praxis and the Clarks had to put up cash for the last few years to make sure the project didn’t falter, which was worrying, Jamial Clark said.

An apartment building will be built at Crenshaw Boulevard and 54th Street in Los Angeles near the Metro K line.

A 48-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail will be built at Crenshaw Boulevard and 54th Street in Los Angeles near the Metro K line.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“I invested over $100,000 of my money just to keep things going,” he said, “and to keep bills paid and the mortgage paid,” but he and his sister didn’t want to let go of the property their parents toiled over and where they spent many hours of their young lives.

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“Selling was never going to be an option, even though we got to a point where we had to think about it” as rising interest rates and inflation drove the potential cost of the project so high it looked out of reach, Clark said.

The pair attended nearby 54th Street Elementary School and after classes they walked to their mother’s salon, where they pitched in answering the phone.

“It was like our second home,” Clark said, a place with a nurturing vibe that encouraged customers to linger and chat.

“Mom was old-school press-and-curl,” he said, referring to a popular hairstyle in the 1990s. “My mom was taking out those weaves and regrowing their hair.”

The salon had a private area where women with thinning hair could get scalp treatments that included massages from their late beautician sister Carla Taylor and oils formulated by their mother.

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“It was almost like a counseling session,” he said. “The ladies would stay after they got their hair done and order lunch.”

Members of the Clark family have owned the property for decades.

Members of the Clark family have owned the property for decades.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

On Saturdays their mom played such “old” music as the Temptations, Al Green and the Whispers, he said. “The ladies would just love to come and sit.”

Her tenants in the building included the wig shop with a celebrity clientele, a shoe repair shop, a frame shop and a social services provider, all of which relocated in the neighborhood, he said.

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Some neighbors were apprehensive about the plan to knock down a building infused with emotions and memories for so many, but Clark saw an opportunity to be part of potential economic changes coming to the area. In West Adams, another historically black community, development of new apartments, restaurants and shops was already taking place on Adams Boulevard.

“I was like, ‘Wow, Crenshaw should be comparable to that, at least.’”

In the 1920s and 1930s, Central Avenue was the center of L.A.’s black community. Later, the center shifted to the Crenshaw Corridor, particularly between Adams and Slauson Avenue, said real estate developer Philip Hart, who is familiar with the plans for Clark at 54th but not involved in the project.

Lately, the multibillion-dollar public investments in Metro’s Crenshaw line and the Expo line that intersects it “have had a ripple effect in terms of the communities they serve becoming desirable,” Hart said.

That economic shift puts pressure on local residents, he said. “Can they continue to pay their rent or their property taxes? The question of gentrification and displacement has become a very important question in the Crenshaw District over the past 10 years or so.”

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If redevelopment doesn’t bring with it affordable housing and good-paying jobs, residents will be priced out of their neighborhoods and join a long-running exodus to Palmdale, Lancaster and the Inland Empire, where the cost of living is cheaper, he said.

The Crenshaw community, Hart said, “should retain its historic African American cultural cachet.”

Keys and the Clarks hope their project will play a small part in keeping the neighborhood intact. The building will include 10 units considered “deeply affordable” because they are reserved for tenants earning 50% of the median income in the area when they become available in late 2026.

The apartments will be bigger than average, including two- and three-bedroom units to accommodate families, said Keys, who is working on the project with her partner Charles Wise.

Work has begun on a new 48-unit apartment building near the Metro K line.

Work has begun on a 48-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail at Crenshaw Boulevard and 54th Street in Los Angeles near the Metro K line.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

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One of the biggest challenges to getting the project underway was finding financing. A building that size typically would be funded with a loan or two, but Keys had to assemble a complicated package from seven entities including philanthropic nonprofits after approaching about 100 financing sources.

“Even though I’ve built over a billion dollars’ worth of projects over the course of my career, this was my first time as a small woman-led business that I was raising money on my own,” Keys said. “It was incredibly challenging.”

Praxis put up more than $200,000 of its own funds and worked without compensation to prove that partnering with legacy landowners to create new housing can work, she said.

Among the financiers was MSquared, a women-owned real estate development and investment firm that will retain an equity share, as will New York investment and development firm Six Peak Capital.

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The need to securing financing from multiple sources dragged out the process, but the effort was worth it, Hart said.

“What they’ve done was challenging, but they’ve done it and they’re having a groundbreaking,” he said. “That’s a good thing.”

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Video: Bezos Is ‘Very Optimistic’ About a Second Trump Term

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Video: Bezos Is ‘Very Optimistic’ About a Second Trump Term

new video loaded: Bezos Is ‘Very Optimistic’ About a Second Trump Term

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Bezos Is ‘Very Optimistic’ About a Second Trump Term

During an interview at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder, said President-elect Donald J. Trump was calmer and more confident now.

“Jeffrey Bezos, everybody.” [audience clapping] “If we’re talking about Trump, I think it’s very interesting. I’m actually very optimistic this time around that we’re going to see — I’m very hopeful about this. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.” “What about the idea that he thinks that the press is the enemy?” “Well, I think he — I’m going to try to talk him out of that idea. I don’t think the press is the enemy. And I don’t think — he’s also — you’ve probably grown in the last eight years. He has, too. This is not the case: The press is not the enemy.” “I hope you’re right.” “I hope I’m right, too.” “Have you talked —” ”Let’s go persuade him of this —” “Have you talked to him about it?” “You and I should go. Let’s go talk to him.” “If we could try —” “I really don’t — I think that this is absolutely — I don’t think he’s going to see it the same way. But maybe I’ll be wrong.” “Was that always your thought, by the way?” “What I’ve seen so far is that he is calmer than he was the first time and more confident, more settled.”

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