Columbia Pictures moving to Burbank, not to Culver City.Columbia Pictures moving to Burbank, not to Culver City Culver City, city (1990 pop. 38,793), Los Angeles co., S Calif., a residential suburb of Los Angeles; inc. 1917. It is a center of the U.S. motion-picture industry, whose roots in the city date to c.1915. Its chief manufactures are rubber products and computers. Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. will announce next month that it has relocated its New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. corporate headquarters to Burbank, the Business Journal has learned. The news refutes earlier published reports in the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Morning daily newspaper. Established in 1881, it was purchased and incorporated in 1884 by Harrison Gray Otis (1837–1917) under The Times-Mirror Co. (the hyphen was later dropped from the name). that stated the entertainment giant would relocate its top New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of brass to its recently acquired studio lot in Culver City. Columbia is hoping to undertake a $500 million expansion/renovation project on that 44.7-acre lot, which would nearly double the lot's existing 1.5 million square feet of building space over 15 years. The development proposal is still in the early stages of its lengthy city-approval process. Major construction is expected to begin in mid-1992, a company spokeswoman reported. Columbia now employs about 500 people on its Culver City lot, but is looking to increase that workforce tenfold by the time the project is complete. Earlier published reports stated that Columbia's top corporate brass would be among those 5,000 Culver City workers. But last week's news refutes those reports. Columbia, in fact, has been slowly and quietly relocating its upper-echelon corporate staffers out of the company's long-held corporate headquarters building on Manhattan's east side and into the Burbank building that will officially become its new corporate headquarters beginning next month. That building, located at 3400 Riverside Drive A number of cities around the world have a Riverside Drive. In the United States:
Coke cola, dope - carbonated drink flavored with extract from kola nuts (`dope' is a southernism in the United States) Co., formerly a major Columbia stockholder. The building has housed about 1,200 Columbia employees since it first opened last year. Among those 1,200 are the company's high-priced co-chairmen Peter Guber and Jon Peters. About 20 key New York execs responsible for finance, accounting, administration, human resources The fancy word for "people." The human resources department within an organization, years ago known as the "personnel department," manages the administrative aspects of the employees. , legal and other corporate staff functions will have relocated to Burbank by next month, company sources said. Among those East Coast transplants are Kenneth Williams Kenneth Charles Williams (22 February 1926 – 15 April 1988) was an English comic actor, star of twenty six Carry On films and notable radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne, as well as a witty raconteur on a wide range of subjects. , senior vice president of finance and administration; Ronald Jacoby, senior vice president and general counsel; and Edgar Howells Jr., vice president and corporate controller. Quite a few of the New York staffers, however, were unwilling to move west. Hence, Columbia will soon begin looking to fill about 50 corporate slots with local West Coast talent, a company spokeswoman said. Among those who chose to resign rather than forsake their Big Apple homes was Lawrence Ruisi, who until recently had been chief financial officer for Columbia. Ruisi has since been replaced by Abbott Brown, a local resident. To make room for Columbia's incoming East Coast brass, the company said it will soon begin moving about 250 employees out of its Studio Plaza space in Burbank. Those employees will be relocated into first-class leased space in nearby Universal City. Ironically, Columbia's $7.4-million lease for 45,000 square feet in Universal City represented something of a coup for one of its chief competitors, MCA MCA in full Music Corporation of America Entertainment conglomerate. It was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Jules Stein as a talent agency. In the 1960s it bought Decca Records and Universal Pictures, and today it produces films, music, and television shows. Inc. MCA owns every bit of Universal City's 1.5 million square feet of office space. And with the recent Columbia deal, 100 percent of that Universal City space is leased. Having absolutely no direct lease space available is quite a feat considering current market conditions, said Brad Wilson, the commercial agent representing MCA's properties. "You're always hearing about what a glut of office space we have on in L.A. But what other local market can you name that's 100 percent leased? Not a single one," said Wilson in answer to his own question. "Even figuring in sublease sublease n. the lease of all or a portion of premises by a tenant who has leased the premises from the owner. A sublease may be prohibited by the original lease, or require written permission from the owner. space, there's only about 15,000 square feet available in Universal City. Since MCA's already receiving rent on that space, it's all sewn up for them." Available office space is indeed scarce throughout the entire East San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. , as entertainment-related tenants continue their dramatic expansions throughout the area. That submarket's office vacancy rate stood at 7.0 percent at the end of the third-quarter, lower than all but one of L.A. County's 26 submarkets. (See chart on page 50.) |
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