The Los Angeles Times building (Credit: Wikipedia)
UPDATED, April 13, 6:00 p.m.: Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong will move the Los Angeles Times to a campus under construction in El Segundo, the Times reported. Soon-Shiong said that the company “needed to create the most modern newsroom,” and signaled that the move won’t be temporary, as previously thought.
“We need to build a campus that is there for the next 100 years, not to lease a building,” Soon-Shiong said.
Finally, the Los Angeles Times has revealed where it will move when its lease runs out at the Times Mirror Square building in Downtown, and it might surprise you.
The Times’ new owner-to-be, billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, will move the 137-year-old newspaper of record to El Segundo, a small city south of the Los Angeles International Airport that’s best known as a hub of aerospace and defense industries. Soon-Shiong made the announcement at a town-hall style meeting with staff on Friday and the newspaper later announced it on their website.
The move appears to be temporary, according to Times reporter Carolina Miranda, who tweeted during Friday’s town hall that leadership was also weighing a move to the paper’s printing plant at Olympic Boulevard and Alameda Street in the Arts District.
Soon-Shiong purchased a warehouse in El Segundo in January for $43 million through an LLC tied to an executive at his Culver City-based biotech firm, Nantworks. Its unclear if the purchase is in any way connected to the Times’ move.
Speculation has been rife about where the newspaper would go since the Onni Group purchased its current home, the Times Mirror Square, in 2016. The Canadian firm immediately announced it wanted to redevelop the Art Deco building into a mixed-use project with office, retail and potentially residential space.
Soon-Shiong agreed to buy the Times earlier this year for $500 million from Tronc, a Chicago-based newspaper publisher. The South African-born doctor has lived in L.A. for 38 years and, according to Forbes, is worth $7.8 billion. He first got involved with the Times when he invested in Tronc in 2016 and is set to bring the Times under local ownership for the first time in nearly two decades.
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