L.A. Times will move to 2300 E. Imperial Highway in El Segundo
The new home of the Los Angeles Times will be at 2300 E. Imperial Highway in El Segundo.
A spokesman for Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, soon to be the newspaper’s new owner, said The Times would relocate to that address permanently sometime before the end of June, when the lease at its longtime headquarters in downtown Los Angeles expires.
Employees will move into a 120,000-square-foot building already on the site, at the intersection of Imperial Highway and North Douglas Street.
The building is currently being reconfigured to house a newsroom spread across multiple floors as well as a cafeteria, a museum gallery, a retail shop, multimedia studios and event spaces, Soon-Shiong said Friday during an interview.
The 4.5-acre property also has room for a second building to be built from the ground up as needed, he said.
The Times has been at its current location in downtown L.A. since 1935. But it became a lessee in 2014 after Tribune Co., a previous owner, spun off its newspapers — without their real estate — into a separate business unit. Then, two years later, Tribune Media Co. sold the iconic Art Deco building to Canadian developer Onni Group.
Soon-Shiong said Onni has demanded a $1-million-a-month rent increase to keep the paper’s staff at the 750,000-square-foot complex across from City Hall, money that could be better spent on resources for the newsroom. Because he owns the El Segundo building, the paper will have more flexibility and control, he said.
In announcing the move to El Segundo to The Times’ staff Friday, Soon-Shiong said he envisioned a campus with a modern newsroom that “is there for the next 100 years.”
In February the billionaire former surgeon struck a $500-million deal with media company Tronc to buy The Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Spanish-language publication Hoy and several small Southern California community papers, including the Glendale News-Press and the Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa.
The sale is expected to close this month.
Formerly known as Times Mirror Square, The Times’ current Civic Center headquarters is a mix of five interconnected structures that fill an entire city block, bounded by Broadway and Spring and 1st and 2nd streets.
Shortly after Onni bought the property for more than $100 million in 2016, the developer filed plans with the city to demolish part of the complex and build a pair of high-rise residential towers and several retail stores and restaurants.
UPDATES:
10:40 a.m. This article was updated with additional details on the current Times building, its lease and future development plans at the site.
This article was originally published at 6 p.m. on Monday, April 16.
