REAL ESTATE

Innovative Assignment: An Irvine architecture firm, Stoutenborough Inc., has been selected to design a 53,000-square-foot media plaza owned by former Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Magic Johnson. The entertainment plaza in South-Central Los Angeles will include retail, food, a multiple-screen movie theater and a new parking structure.

“The ‘Magic Theater’ is destined to become as important an entertainment icon in South-Central as the Grauman Chinese Theater has been to Hollywood,” said architect J. Todd Stoutenborough, president of the company, which has about 14 employees and is considering hiring additional workers to help with this project. “The project will have a courtyard, and we will ask people in the community--including famous actors and actresses--to come and place their handprints in when we pour the concrete,” he said.