BOEING'S VALLEY BOOST; AEROSPACE FIRM TO USE WEST HILLS SITE.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

In a $35 million deal that keeps the San Fernando Valley a major aerospace player into the next century, Boeing Co. on Wednesday announced it is moving 400 employees from throughout the region to the former Hughes Aircraft Corp. complex in West Hills.

Boeing will use the complex for some of its Rocketdyne division operations acquired when it bought Rockwell International Corp. in December 1996 for $3.2 billion.

The company probably will move into the 170,000-square-foot facility, where it will conduct laser and electro-optic research and development, in March. Boeing signed a 10-year lease on the property, which encompasses two buildings at the campus complex on the northwest corner of Fallbrook Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard that is now known as the West Hills Corporate Village.

``Rocketdyne is very pleased to be part of the Valley's future as the inaugural tenant of this new business park,'' said Byron Wood, Rocketdyne's vice president and general manager.

Mayor Richard Riordan's LA's Business Team helped broker the deal, officials said.

``The expansion into West Hills represents a boost to our employment picture in the San Fernando Valley and an important addition to our business community,'' said City Councilman Hal Bernson.

Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo said the Boeing deal shows how a public-private partnership can benefit a community.

``It also says that a company of Boeing's stature believes in what the city of Los Angeles can and will deliver. That's a positive for the Valley in particular and the great employee base located there,'' he said.

John Rooney, president of the Valley Economic Development Center, said Boeing's move will result in more jobs in the area.

``That's great news. Four hundred jobs will have a major impact on that region's economy,'' he said.

Boeing also considered the Great Western high-rise in Chatsworth but the location of the Hughes complex was too good to pass up.

``It's a very good location for us,'' said company spokesman Dan Beck. ``If you draw a triangle between our Santa Susana facility, our De Soto (Avenue) facility and our Canoga Park facility and put a pin in the middle, this would be the site,'' he said of the new location.

The West Hills location also gives Boeing plenty of room to grow.

``Business is doing very well for Rocketdyne. We don't have any immediate plans for growth at that location but it does give us the ability to expand should business warrant,'' he said.

Boeing's new facility is on 30 acres owned by a partnership between Regent Properties of Beverly Hills and Shamrock Holdings based in Burbank.

The partnership bought the property last year from Coast Federal Savings for an undisclosed amount and is in the process of renovating office buildings on the site. Plans call for two more buildings that will be constructed to tenant specifications.

The city, under the auspices of the Valley Job Recovery Corp., bought the complex from Hughes for $15 million in 1994 and later sold it to Coast Savings for the same amount.

However, the Job Recovery Corp. also retained an option to purchase 30 acres and transferred that to Regent and Shamrock. The Los Angeles Police Department has built a 911 facility on the site and DeVry Institute is building classrooms on 20 acres.

The entire Hughes site covers 80 acres and is steeped in Southern California's aerospace history. It turned out devastating weapons like the TOW, Phoenix, Maverick and AMRAAM missiles for armed forces around the world.

Hughes moved into the site in 1966 when the campus consisted of just a few buildings on hillsides near the rocky slopes of the Santa Susana Mountains. During the 28 years that Hughes occupied the site, it constructed six buildings and added parklike landscaping. The peak came in 1984, when 4,000 people worked at the facility.

But with the end of the Cold War and defense spending cuts in the early 1990s, employment began dwindling. In March 1993 the company decided to move its engineering operations to the missile manufacturing facility in Tucson and shuttered its Valley operations.

On Oct. 7, 1994, the last of the workers at Hughes Missile Systems turned off their computers for the final time.

The Boeing employees being transferred to the site come from three other company facilities in the region. They are:

All 100 employees from the Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power Unit now based in the 2600 block of Townsgate Road in Westlake Village. The lease on that facility, which Rocketdyne has occupied since 1988, is expiring, the company said.

One hundred of 518 employees at the company's Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Employment at Santa Susana will not fall because these workers will be replaced.

Two hundred twenty of the 1,701 workers at the company's De Soto Avenue facility. They work on the international space station and the linear aerospike engine for the X-33 launch vehicle being developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The deal is the second-biggest commercial real estate lease in terms of square footage in the Valley during the past five years. 20th Century Industries' lease on 400,000 square feet in Woodland Hills' Warner Center is the largest.