O.C. Register moving from Santa Ana to make way for development
The Orange County Register, which has called Santa Ana home for 111 years, will move to Anaheim next year, the paper announced Wednesday.
The move to a location near Angel Stadium comes after Digital First Media purchased the Register and its sister paper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, from Freedom Communications in a March bankruptcy auction for $49.8 million.
The deal included the paper’s Santa Ana real estate, later flipped to Santa Ana developer Mike Harrah for a reported $34 million.
The Register’s new home at 2190 Towne Centre Place, Publisher Ron Hasse told the paper, will have a “modern environment that inspires creative thinking and innovation.”
“We will be located in an area within Anaheim that continues to emerge as a hub of commerce and entertainment,” the Register quoted him as saying. “While the Register is proud of its 111-year history that originated in Santa Ana, we also look forward to our future in Anaheim.”
Hasse declined to comment on the size of the new headquarters, which the paper is scheduled to move to in March.
Harrah said he wants to turn the 14-acre Register site into a mixed-use complex that would include creative offices, residential units, a shopping mall and a hotel.
Harrah said several companies are interested in leasing the entire 175,000-square-foot headquarters building, which he purchased in 2014 and leased back to the paper.
The owner of the Los Angeles Times had also bid on the Register at the bankruptcy auction, but its offer was derailed by antitrust concerns.
The Register and Press-Enterprise are now part of Digital First’s Southern California News Group, which includes the Los Angeles Daily News, the Daily Breeze and the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
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UPDATES:
3:40 p.m.: This article was updated to include comments from developer Mike Harrah.
This article was originally published at 3:10 p.m.
