By LINDA COBURN and JASON SCHAFF Business Journal Staff Bob Hope Airport, the Daily News, the Voit Companies, Bob’s Big Boy and William Mulholland, the former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power: every one of these entities was essential in literally building the Valley. The airport grew up with the Valley’s aerospace industry which has been a major economic engine over the years. The Daily News has been chronicling local happenings since 1911 and the Voit Companies, through their development of Warner Center, helped build what has become another “downtown” for Los Angeles and a major financial district. Bob’s Big Boy is a Valley icon promoting the local car culture, and without William Mulholland, who built the aqueduct that brought water to the Valley, we simply would not exist here. All of these were honored on June 12 at an event sponsored by the Valley Industry and Commerce Association which unveiled its first members of its Valley Business Hall of Fame. Each year, VICA plans to add members to the Hall of Fame representing either the birth, development or the present day of the Valley, according to VICA Chairman Greg Lippe. VICA President and CEO Brendan Huffman said that the honorees represent the “economic vitality and the unique culture that you don’t find anywhere but the San Fernando Valley.” Honorees were selected by VICA board members who took nominations from the organization’s general members and the community at large. Following are profiles of this year’s honorees and how they contributed to the economy of the Valley. Bob Hope Airport This Valley entity, formerly called Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport until being named for the famed entertainer in 2003, can be said to have directly helped build the Valley. Not only has it provided convenient flights for local residents for decades, the airport has been directly associated with the growth of the Valley’s aerospace industry. Bob Hope Airport was called United Airport when it opened in 1930. It was built by the United Airports Company of California, Ltd. It was said to be the first multi-million-dollar airport in the country. At the time, it was the primary airport for Los Angeles. Lockheed Aircraft Co. owned manufacturing facilities close to the airport during World War II. The company bought the airport in 1940 and began to expand its facilities. Lockheed changed the airport’s name to Lockheed Air Terminal but continued to operate it as a commercial airport. After the war, all the major airlines moved to what is now LAX. The airport in Burbank became popular again in the late 1960s when commercial aircraft that could maneuver the facility’s short runways were developed. Lockheed sold the airport in 1978 to an airport authority created by the cities of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena. According to a 2006 study, the airport has a total economic impact of $3.9 billion in Southern California and generates more than 45,000 jobs at the airport and the broader local economy. Airport Spokesman Victor Gill said the story of Bob Hope Airport goes hand in hand with the story of how the Valley’s development has been extremely dependent on transportation. “All you have to do is look at the first aerial photos of the airport and see there was nothing around it,” Gill said. Bob’s Big Boy Mike Lopez, general manager of the last remaining Valley Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, in Toluca Lake, started working for Bob’s 33 years ago as a dishwasher. Operations manager Mark McCabe tops that with a total of 40 years spent working at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant. “I was 16 years old when I started part-time while I was in high school,” said McCabe. “I can literally say my first job was flipping patties.” He became a franchisee in 1993, taking ownership of the Toluca Lake restaurant, but his tenure there also included a year as assistant manager in 1971. “I was there for 52 weeks, exactly,” McCabe said. He’s intimately aware of the cultural impact Bob’s has had on multiple generations of Valley residents. One customer he chatted with outside the restaurant even said he lost his virginity under the glow of the neon Bob’s Big Boy sign. Now, he said, “We’re trying to retain that historic charm for the customers. We want to give them a nostalgic trip back to when life was easier.” McCabe can remember talking to entertainer Bob Hope, who regularly drove in for car service in his pink convertible Cadillac to order a strawberry milkshake. “He was just like a regular guy,” said McCabe. “He liked to just chat with the girls and drink his milkshake.” The restaurant still hosts Cruise Night every Friday from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Riverside Drive and the restaurant’s parking lot become a sea of classic cars. In accepting the award on behalf of Bob’s Big Boy, McCabe gave all the credit for the ongoing success of the restaurant to GM Lopez, prompting a round of applause from the audience. Daily News For many Valley residents, the Daily News of Los Angeles is “the” daily newspaper for Los Angeles. Despite ownership changes over the years, recent layoffs and editorial and business-side shakeups in management, the newspaper still speaks for the Valley on a daily basis, many Valley business officials say. It has set the region’s political agenda as the Valley attempts to get its “fair share” of services from the City of Los Angeles, they add. Some in the Valley credit the newspaper for inspiring the secession movement here which culminated in 2002 with a failed vote to break off from the City of Los Angeles. But although it did not succeed, VICA’s Huffman said the secession movement helped to improve city services to the Valley. “They’re so relevant in the Valley,” Huffman said about the Daily News. The newspaper started publishing in 1911 as the Van Nuys Call, eventually becoming the Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, the name it still is lovingly referred to by old-timers in the Valley. The name came from the paper’s extensive classified advertising and the green-toned newsprint upon which it was printed. In 1976 it became the Valley News and Green Sheet publishing four times a week. It became a daily in 1981, calling itself the Daily News of Los Angeles. In 1987, under the ownership of sports and real estate mogul Jack Kent Cooke, the newspaper moved from Van Nuys to Woodland Hills. Cooke spent millions on new facilities for the newspaper and expanded its coverage to surrounding areas such as the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. In 1998, after Cooke’s death, MediaNews owned by William Dean Singleton purchased the paper and created the Los Angeles Newspaper Group which owns several newspapers throughout Southern California including the Pasadena Star-News and Long Beach Press-Telegram. Like many big-city dailies, the Daily News has hit rough times in recent years with both circulation and advertising in decline due to competition from the Internet. Current Daily News Publisher Doug Hanes said the newspaper plans to strengthen its local mission even as it tries to find its way amid the turmoil in the media industry. “I’ve learned the wishes of the Valley,” Hanes said. “I had no idea how strong a relationship the paper had with the community.” Hanes has tried to strengthen the newspaper’s Web operations since taking his position last year. “The platform will change,” Hanes said about the newspaper’s form. <!– Water: William Mulholland. –> Water: William Mulholland. William Mulholland “Water becomes the essence of our existence,” said Catherine Mulholland in accepting VICA’s honor on behalf of her grandfather, William Mulholland. It is an apt description for the selection of the engineer of the Owens Valley aqueduct as one of the inaugural members of the Hall of Fame. Catherine Mulholland, 85, was 12 years old when her grandfather died. She herself grew up in the Valley, “on 700 acres of citrus land in what is now Northridge and Chatsworth,” she said. Her mother’s people originally settled in what is now Calabasas in the 1880s, but ironically, they “were driven out by drought,” said Mulholland. As a young adult, she moved away from Los Angeles and when she returned about 30 years ago, Catherine Mulholland said “It was like moving to an alien land.” She found that there was a lack of interest and knowledge of the past. So she decided to commit her retirement years to combating that. After 10 years of research, Catherine Mulholland published a well-received book published by the University of California press about her grandfather entitled William Mulholland: The Rise of Los Angeles. She remains active in Water and Power Associates, a non-profit organization that seeks to educate the general public about the history and importance of water to Southern California. Catherine Mulholland said that despite his vision her grandfather could not have foreseen the explosive growth of Los Angeles. “He came here in the 1870s and said it was a little pueblo of 9,000 souls,” she said. “And then the land boom happened and the population increased to 11,000. By the time the aqueduct was completed, the area had half a million residents.” In the opening chapter of her biography of William Mulholland, the granddaughter writes, “Three years after Mulholland’s death, newspaperman John Russell McCarthy wrote of him, ‘He had little pity, much strength, great ambition. There is no one else in sight, past or present, whom Los Angeles is more likely to remember.” Voit Companies After Mulholland brought the water, the real estate developers brought the people and the commerce, and none have done it in a bigger way than the Voit Companies. Ten years after starting in the mail room at Coldwell Banker, Robert D. Voit decided in 1971 that he wanted to develop his own project. He purchased a 14-acre parcel of land in Woodland Hills and built 83,000 square feet of garden office space. That led to more deals and some scary times during the early ’70s, but in 1974, just as the country was emerging from recession, he made a much bigger move and purchased the land on which Warner Center emerged. When it was completed 20 years later, Warner Center (technically Warner Center Plaza and Warner Center Business Park) had become one of the commercial hubs of the Valley, with 2.9 million square feet of office, industrial, retail and hospitality space. Voit Companies then dove into a new arena, the public-private partnership, and as a for-fee developer built the $41.5 million Marvin Braude Constituent Service Center in Van Nuys. A partnership with Selleck Development yielded The Plant development which turned another piece of Valley history, the site of the now-defunct General Motors plant, into a retail and entertainment center and an 800,000-square-foot industrial park in Panorama City. The Voit Companies now include Voit Commercial Brokerage, Voit Development, and Valley Commercial Construction. Tim Regan, vice president of development and acquisitions accepted the VICA award on behalf of Bob Voit. “Bob Voit is just involved today as he was 37 years ago,” said Regan. He then added that while he himself was far too young to have been involved in Warner Center, he did have the privilege of working on many of the other Valley projects that led VICA to select Voit Companies as one of its inaugural Hall of Fame members. “Nowhere has it been like it has been in the San Fernando Valley,” said Regan.
