Business News

MEGAN V. WINSLOW/TOWN CRIER
Momentum Cycling Studio’s Victoria Smith leads a high-intensity cycling workout at the downtown Los Altos business July 2. Clients and staff members celebrated the company’s fifth anniversary with dancing, food and drinks June 2.

The lively workout music that accompanies cyclists as they vigorously pedal their stationary bikes was playing as usual, but on this evening, no one was exercising. Instead, clients and staff were celebrating the fifth anniversary of Momentum Cycling Studio.

The June 2 event featured dancing, food and drinks at the studio, located at 129 First St. in downtown Los Altos.

MEGAN V. WINSLOW/TOWN CRIER
Workers from the Rose International Market construction project next door vacate Peet’s outdoor seating area after a coffee break.

The block-long development long in the works at El Camino Real and Castro Street in Mountain View has begun to open, with a return of familiar tenants housed within its new look.

Mountain View City Council members were all business last week as they moved to put two initiatives on the Nov. 6 ballot.

The first, a proposal to tax cannabis sales up to 9 percent, generated only a fraction of the discussion at the June 26 council meeting.

Carson

The report is in on a harassment scandal at the Mountain View-based Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and it portrays an institution where day-to-day crudeness and abuse was exacerbated by a broken, retributive reporting system with little or no accountability.

Foundation CEO Emmett Carson’s resignation was announced June 27 in conjunction with the report’s release. He had been on paid leave since April, when a lengthy investigation reported by a reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy revealed widespread allegations of abuse and indifference or retaliation at the foundation. Carson joined the foundation more than a decade ago.

Humphrey

The Mountain View Chamber of Commerce is undergoing a change in leadership for the second time in three years.

Chamber officials announced last week that CEO Tony Siress is stepping down after two years and eight months on the job. Siress was hired in October 2015 to replace Oscar Garcia, who left earlier that year.

A federal grand jury charged Los Altos Hills resident Elizabeth Holmes with wire fraud last week in the continuing investigation of her company, the Palo Alto-based Theranos Inc.

Holmes, 34, founded Theranos in 2003 as a life sciences startup focused on closely guarded medical innovation related to blood testing and diagnostics. As she assembled a star-studded board and raised hundreds of millions of dollars from local venture capitalists and wealthy investors, Holmes grew the company to a valuation of $9 billion yet revealed little about the fundamental science driving her products.