L.A. Times Relocates to El Segundo
(Daily Breeze, April 13, 2018)
The Los Angeles Times is moving out of its historic downtown headquarters — and the city entirely — to set up shop within a few months at an elaborate campus in the suburbs of the South Bay, its new owner announced Friday.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire physician who is purchasing the paper and the San Diego Union-Tribune for $500 million, announced in a morning meeting with 300 staffers that Times operations will move to the new campus under construction in coastal El Segundo, adjacent Los Angeles International Airport. Audible gasps from stunned employees greeted the announcement, Times staffers said.
The plan is to move out of the Times’ landmark art deco building, which was built in 1935 at First and Spring streets in a downtown L.A. area known as Times Mirror Square, when the newspaper’s lease is up June 30, the paper reported.
Tribune Media Co., based in Chicago, sold the building in September 2016. Plans have been discussed to redevelop the property into a collection of residential housing, shops and creative offices.
Soon-Shiong told staffers that the newspaper’s landlord will allow the newspaper to stay in the building beyond June only if it pays an additional $1 million per month in rent, the Times reported, so “there’s not much time” to find space for 800 employees.
“We decided that we needed to create the most modern newsroom … one that respects the work and the lifestyle of the people who work in the newsroom,” he was quoted as saying. “We need to build a campus that is there for the next 100 years, not to lease a building.”
According to the Times, the campus will have an eight-story, 120,000-square-foot building, and the first floor will house a Los Angeles Times historical museum, as well as retail and event space.
Soon-Shiong told the New York Times he wants the paper’s new home to also have a “state-of-the-art studio for video and podcasts,” a day-care center and perhaps, someday, a basketball court.
According to the L.A. Times, Soon-Shiong’s wife, Michele, is overseeing the new headquarters design.
The newspaper’s Olympic Boulevard printing plant in downtown L.A. may be used for office space, the paper reported.
Matt Pearce, a national reporter for The Times and vice chair of its ewly formed union, said the announcement has raised questions among employees about how it will affect their day-to-day lives.
“We’re excited to see investment in our journalism, though many of our staffers are naturally concerned about the move, since it will greatly lengthen many of our commutes, and many of us can’t afford to move to the area,” he said in an email. “The Guild is hoping to propose ways to help alleviate those strains, and some of our workers are hopeful we can maintain a presence downtown so our journalists have easy access to many of the civic institutions we cover.”
The median price of a single-family home in the South Bay topped $700,000 in March, according to the South Association of Realtors. And with vacancy rates low and demand high in an area with a growing tech sector, apartment rents also are not a bargain.
Soon-Shiong has recently been increasing his footprint in El Segundo.
He is part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, which has a training facility on Mariposa Avenue, and opened a state-of-the-art cancer diagnostics and treatment center in July.
El Segundo Mayor Suzanne Fuentes said she was thrilled with Soon-Shiong’s announcement.
“He has invested so much into our city,” she said. “I was delighted to hear the open campus he proposed so that people can come in and see how newspapers are put together.”
Soon-Shiong has acquired 10 buildings in El Segundo in the past year-and-half, City Manager Greg Carpenter said.
City staff was made aware of the Times’ plans about a month ago, Carpenter said, but he could not provide further details. “He’s very interested in El Segundo and we have very strong partnership,” he said.
El Segundo Councilman Don Brann welcomed the move.
“We welcome the LAT to El Segundo and appreciate Dr. Soon-Shiong’s ongoing investment in our city,” he said in an email. “He has demonstrated confidence in El Segundo and is a champion of business on numerous fronts.”
NantWorks’ Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Medicine at Mariposa, which is running clinical trials of immunotherapy using “natural killer cells,” is one of the newest biotech companies to move to El Segundo, along with Kite Pharma.
NantWorks also is building a manufacturing plant that someday will produce “billions and billions” of the cells, Soon-Shiong has said.
Four years ago, El Segundo embarked on ambitious marketing push to rebrand the city as an affordable alternative to Silicon Beach, one close to LAX and major freeways.
The efforts have attracted a wave of creative offices and won El Segundo the title of most business-friendly city in L.A. County in 2015.
Last year, Soon-Shiong was honored as the El Segundo Champion of Business. He told the crowd of civic and business leaders that his cancer center will “put El Segundo on the map as the biotech center of the country, maybe of the world.”