LA Times is moving to El Segundo

At a meeting with the Los Angeles Times staff, the paper’s soon-to-be owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that the paper would be leaving its longtime Downtown home and moving west—far west, into a spot in El Segundo.

The Los Angeles Times reports the paper’s new home is under construction now. When complete, it will sit on about 4.5 acres and include an eight-story, 120,000-square-fot building. Event space, storefronts, and a “museum gallery of The Times’ 136-year history” would fill out the building’s first floor.

The move to El Segundo, first reported to be temporary, will be permanent. “We need to build a campus that is there for the next 100 years, not to lease a building,” Soon-Shiong told Times staffers.

Staff writer Carolina Miranda, tweeting from the meeting, says the decision to leave the paper’s Civic Center location came after the newspaper and Onni, the Canadian developer that owns the building, couldn’t agree on terms for a new lease.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Onni had asked the Times for a “$1-million-a-month rent increase.”

Such a move will likely cause a stir in the newsroom. In January, the paper’s union organizing committee argued strongly against a rumored move to Playa Vista orchestrated by the paper’s then-owner, Tronc.

The committee noted that not only would such a move limit the paper’s ability to cover local government, which is based in Downtown, but it would also dramatically increase reporters’ commute times.

It’s also possible the paper could rent up some space at its former Olympic printing plant for reporters who need to be close to Downtown. The 26-acre property between the southern tip of the Arts District and the 10 Freeway sold to Harridge Development Group for $120 million in 2016.

Last year, Onni announced plans to redevelop much of the site, adding two residential towers and refurbishing the Moderne Los Angeles Times building constructed in 1935.

There is no word on when the move is scheduled to happen, but it might be soon: The lease in Downtown’s Times Mirror Square was originally due to expire in June.

• Patrick Soon-Shiong plans to move Los Angeles Times to new campus in El Segundo [Curbed LA]
• Is the Los Angeles Times moving to this horribly outdated vision of a newsroom? [Curbed LA]