Santa Monica Seafood Company announced last week that it has acquired the customer base, corporate name, receivables, inventory and other assets of Fish Warehouse Corporation, a Los Angeles-based seafood distributor that has been in business for the past 23 years. Phil Levy, President of Fish Warehouse, has joined Santa Monica Seafood as a Vice President of Sales.
Santa Monica Seafood is a private, family owned and operated company that has been in the business of supplying quality seafood products since it opened on the pier in 1939 and later went to 12th and Colorado in 1969. The company moved its headquarters to state-of-the-art facilities in Rancho Dominguez in 2003, but continues to maintain the Santa Monica retail store, as well as another in Costa Mesa, specializing in seafood and related specialty products.
Approximately 50 prior employees of Fish Warehouse will now be housed at Santa Monica Seafood’s significantly larger 60,000 square foot facility in Rancho Dominguez. The new organization will have approximately 220 employees, with the largest seafood sales, customer service, purchasing and delivery teams in Southern California and the greater Las Vegas area.
Anthony Cigliano, President of Santa Monica Seafood, said, “Both companies are quality minded organizations with over 90 years of history in the seafood distribution business. The combined customer base of Santa Monica Seafood and Fish Warehouse represents the largest segment of the high quality restaurants, hotels and country clubs in Southern California and Las Vegas. We are proud of this new chapter in our company’s ongoing history.” www.smseafood.com
John Bohn was installed as incoming Chairman of the Board of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce at its Installation Dinner at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. Bohn, a local resident and active community member since 1936, is currently president of Bohn Bros Moultrie Inc. and Equity Associates Inc., both of which manage a series of business entities that own and manage 60 buildings and over one million square feet of industrial and commercial property in Southern California and the central San Joaquin Valley; nearly all the partners and investors are from the Santa Monica area.
Mr. Bohn moved to Santa Monica from Illinois with his mother, brother and grandmother when his father died. He graduated from Santa Monica High School, attended UCLA, operated a floral business and worked at Douglas Aircraft Company, where, in 1941, he was sent to March Field to work in flight tests and aerodynamics on the B19 airplane. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Bohn was a member of the Santa Monica Planning Commission, Redevelopment Agency, City Council, and Personnel Board. More recently, he has been Vice President and a director of Westminster Towers Organization, a group dedicated to providing affordable senior housing.
Bohn replaces outgoing Chairman Eddie Guerboian of Readers Jewelers at the Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit organization founded in 1925 to advocate and represent business interests and issues affecting the community. www.smchamber.com
The Macerich Company, which owns and operates the Santa Monica Place mall that sits between the Third Street Promenade and Sears downtown, is busy about town soliciting input on its planned renovation of the mall. The company abandoned its earlier, more ambitious plans to demolish the existing mall and build a mixed use site from scratch, including residential and offices as well as retail, when those plans met with strong opposition from the community and then the City. Instead, the company is now planning from scratch for a more modest renovation that will be limited to retail uses.
Although Macerich, one of the nation’s largest retail real estate investment trusts, owning about 80 million square feet of gross leasable area across the United States, is headquartered in Santa Monica, it had a team of representatives from Denver and Phoenix, as well as the local headquarters, in town last week attempting to gather input from the City, the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City and others.
Macerich stressed that it was starting over at the “concept stage,” that it wanted an environmentally friendly “green building” insofar as that could be accomplished in a more limited renovation and that it wanted a design that would tie in to the Third Street Promenade. The existing City parking structures and the Macy’s lease represent fixed constraints on renovation plans, but Macerich’s recent acquisition of the space that had been Robinsons-May will provide the company with added flexibility in reconfiguring space within the existing building.
Above all, Macerich seems open to suggestions. www.macerich.com
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