Content about Company Location

Recovery is on the horizon for many sectors of the Santa Clarita Valley real estate market, though no one expects a quick turnaround. Home prices for residential real estate remain depressed but sales have been climbing. On the commercial front, office space remains somewhat stalled but retail is gaining ground and the industrial vacancy rate is at a record low.

Last week, about 15 people attended the Lunch and Learn to better understand how cloud computing differs from their current server situation and if it’s worth making the switch.

“We want to know what the heck ‘the cloud’ is,” said Steven Lettau, marketing director for Advanced Audiology.

Lettau attended SCV Chamber event about cloud computing April 6, hosted by Jeremy Stepan, president of Valencia-based Adage IT.

Adage IT has been selling cloud-solution packages for about six months, Stepan said.

It’s the ‘triple trifecta,’ said Nick Frank of his family-run business.

Founder of Santa Clarita-based Nicholas Aire Systems, Frank has been in the air conditioning business for more than three decades and runs the business made up of himself, his wife, Donna, his son, Jeff, and a handful of employees from a business office at their family home.

The Santa Clarita Valley is a community with a vision; a pro-business community that advocates and plans for economic development. And with all that activity comes growing pains.

“In the Santa Clarita Valley, we have excellent representation from business banks,” said Jonas Peterson, CEO and president of the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation. “However, we are typically behind the curve in venture capital and non-traditional financing.”

These can be frustrating times for owners of small and mid-sized businesses. They must deal with a soft economy as well as a technological world that is changing at a frenetic pace.

Customers expect every business they deal with to have the latest and most sophisticated technology possible. And these customers have grown increasingly impatient with businesses that don’t keep up to speed with things.

California’s housing affordability index is rising, reported the California Association of Realtors, or C.A.R., on Friday.

The percentage of homebuyers who could afford to purchase a median-priced, existing single-family home in California rose to 52 percent in the third quarter of 2011.

In the Santa Clarita Valley, home to a more upscale community, median home prices exceed both the state and L.A. County median prices.

When TOMS Shoes closes out inventory, it turns to its order-fulfillment and warehouse partner, AMS Fulfillment of Valencia to handle the sale.

The Santa Clarita Valley-based business opened its doors 8 a.m. Saturday for TOMS Shoes’ customers to shop and pick up shoes at discounted prices.

AMS Fulfillment opened for business Saturday to lines of shoppers winding almost fully around one of many warehouses it occupies in the Valencia Commerce Center.

People camped out

Nostalgic Creations, a full-service auto repair and complete collision center, is soon expanding into the ice cream business.

The classic, 1950s-style ice cream parlor is set to launch in mid-November and makes a unique addition to Nostalgic Creations’ new 10,000-square-foot automotive shop in Valencia.

Sam Gardian, 44, owner and manager of Nostalgic Creations, expanded his business from its original 3,500 square feet. Gardian is updating the new location turning it into a retro-styled automotive shop.

When Joe Ferezy, general manager of Galpin Subaru, called to let Evan Mendelzon know he’d won the dealership’s drawing for a new iPad, Mendelzon couldn’t believe he’d won.

“I never win anything,” said Mendelzon, a resident of Santa Clarita since 1980.

Mendelzon, an employee of Universal Studios, entered to win the iPad at the 27th annual SCV Community Expo held Sept. 17 and 18.

TriStar Home Loans has joined Bay Equity Home Loans of San Francisco as a retail branch.

Valencia-based TriStar Home Loans, co-founded by Hady Breidy in June 2000, has five employees and eight loan officers in a 5,500-square-foot building.

TriStar, a full-service home loan mortgage broker, has nearly 70 percent of its monthly volume funded as purchase transactions and does an annual volume of approximately $125 million.

The firm has done business Bay Equity for on the wholesale side for quite some time, Briedy said.

In 2004, dreamer John Allen began fulfilling his childhood dream.

“One of my goals in life, ever since I was a kid, was that I wanted to get a patent,” said this former engineer, IT person and teacher.

“I’d think about Thomas Edison​ and think that it would be neat to get a patent and know that I invented something.”

Allen designed and manufactured a product that pops onto a car top in under a minute. And it comes off just as fast.

Advanced Bionics was approved by the FDA to re-enter the market with its HiRes 90K cochlear implant. The Valencia-based operation is a subsidiary of Sonova in Switzerland and is the only U.S. company manufacturing the hearing devices.

The FDA reported two recipients who experienced severe pain, overly loud sounds and/or shocking sensations with the HiRes 90K device 8-10 days after initial activation of their device. Advanced Bionics issued a voluntary recall in November 2010 after becoming aware of the issue.