Jobs are coming to Novato. GoAmerica, a 650-employee company from Hackensack, New Jersey, is abandoning the Garden State for Novato. The company, which provides communications services for the hearing impaired, is taking over almost 18,000 square feet on the Fireman’s Fund Insurance campus.
The company was lured to Novato because the Bay Area provides a positive boost for employee recruitment. Novato was also a primo locale, because GoAmerica already has a temporary office set up in Petaluma. Also, Novato has no toxic waste sites—which is a plus when coming from New Jersey.
GoAmerica is in growth mode, having put together working capital of $125 million, which includes both equity and debt. The company recently merged with Rocklin-based Hands On Video Relay and bought out Verizon’s Telecommunications Relay Services division. GoAmerica is now the largest provider of onsite and remote video interpreting services in the country. Listed on the NASDAQ exchange (GOAM), a series of buyouts has the company combining a number of different video and text relay services as well as different wireless communication products for the hearing impaired.
The Americans with Disabilities Act specifies that text and video relay services must be provided for both the speech and hearing impaired. The federal government subsidizes some of the services that GoAmerica and others provide.
Wins and losses
Redwood Trust, a Mill Valley-based real estate investment trust, is having a tough year. The company buys residential mortgages and packages the loans for sale as securities. Given the brutal single-family market as well as the credit crunch taking place in the capital markets, Redwood posted a loss of $46 million for the second quarter. For the same quarter in 2007, the company posted $11 million in net income.
Redwood is still in good shape, since it didn’t, as a rule, buy sub-prime mortgages—and it still has plenty of cash on hand. The company’s stock has taken a beating, dipping as low as $17.62 a share (from a high of $46.60) this year.
Sonic Solutions of Novato also posted down for the second quarter, losing $3.6 million. For the same quarter the year before, Sonic lost $2 million. The company blames the sour numbers this year on restructuring costs, which totaled $1.3 million and almost $1 million more in stock option review costs and compensation expenses. The digital media software company reported revenues of $30 million for the quarter, which was essentially flat compared to the year before. Sonic is hoping its Roxio consumer line can move the bottom line out of the red and into the black by year end.
One Marin County company showing a profit for the quarter is Novato’s BioMarin Pharmaceuticals. The positive numbers are a big deal for BioMarin, as the company has consistently been in the red. The $3.8 million in earnings represents quite a swing from the $3.9 million loss posted one year ago.
It’s even larger given the fact that sales of Kuvan, a drug that treats a genetic disorder, came in at $12 million, $2 million less than Wall Street had predicted. The company is upbeat, looking at year-end earnings predictions that have jumped from a range of $28 million to $40 million up to $30 million to $42 million.
LRG registers biggest Marin County building buy
Larkspur’s LRG Capital picked up an office building in Novato from Buckley Real Estate LLC for $5.85 million. The acquisition is the largest transaction in Marin so far this year, but it’s really a better measure of how big a mess the capital markets are rather than how desirable Marin commercial real estate is.
LRG is a global boutique investment firm that, among other things, invests equity in real estate through its LRG Capital Real Estate Ventures division. The company acquired the 90 percent-occupied building via LRG’s Capital Real Estate Partners I, an equity fund that will target California properties. Although the fund will focus on acquisition of commercial assets, it will also consider development and rehabilitation projects. The building, located in Bel Marin Keys, is occupied by McKesson Healthcare and Living Out Loud, a firm that charges people for teaching them how to become wealthy.
The 26,000-square-foot building was on the market for about six months. The fund has already invested in a pair of Marin properties, one in the Canal district of San Rafael and the other on East Sir Francis Drake Boulevard not far from LRG’s offices.
Good eats
Celebrity chef Heidi Insalata Krahling and her business partner Patrick Coll are teaming up to open a new restaurant in San Anselmo. Krahling, known as the long-time owner of Insalata, purchased the restaurant formerly known as Eat (and, before that, Ted’s). Krahling’s Insalata, an award-winning, upscale Mediterranean eatery, is located right up the street. The new restaurant will serve Mexican and Latin cuisine and have a full bar. Coll and Krahling hope to open in early 2009.
In a truly Marin move, McDonald’s at the Town Center in Corte Madera is packing up and, in its place, comes The Counter, an upscale, build-your-own-burger franchise that features more than two dozen toppings. The mall has become the center for all things residential over the last few years—kitchen stores, furniture shops and linen emporiums—and the eateries have become more family friendly as well.
The Santa Monica-based restaurant chain could fit into Marin pretty well. It uses Meyer natural beef, natural chicken and turkey and features house-made vegetable burgers. On the other hand, the place will have a full bar, so you can imbibe a premium martini while noshing on a double cheeseburger with avocado, sprouts and garlic aioli.
And if that’s not enough to recommend the new burger joint, it carries a 2006 certification from GQ magazine as one of the “20 burgers you have to eat before you die.” Oprah has also taken a liking to the eatery, and the wealthiest woman in the world strikes me as someone who knows a good burger when she finds one.
