General Telephone Plans to Abandon Santa Monica Base
General Telephone Co. of California announced Monday that it plans to move its corporate headquarters from Santa Monica, where it is the city’s largest private employer, to Thousand Oaks in Ventura County.
The telephone company’s new home will be a three-story office building acquired from Prudential Insurance Co. for $67.5 million, officials said. The building, on an 85-acre site, will provide 425,000 square feet of space, about twice the size of the present headquarters.
About 2,200 General Telephone corporate employees at 14 locations on the west side of Los Angeles, including the Santa Monica headquarters, will be affected by the move, which is to begin this summer and continue through 1986.
Another 2,200 workers will remain at various Westside locations to staff the company’s billing offices and phone stores and to provide repair service.
Officials said General Telephone wants to consolidate its corporate operations, which have been spread among 14 locations, including the company’s headquarters at 100 Wilshire Blvd., overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.
The company considered staying in the Westside area but was deterred by the high cost of remodeling and building offices, said David Anderson, president and chief executive officer of the company.
“When we considered the cost of upgrading our Santa Monica facilities or building a new office in Santa Monica or other locations, we found the Prudential building was the best and most affordable option for us,” he said.
Another “very important factor” in the decision was the high cost of housing in the Westside, which has made it difficult for the company to attract and keep employees, Anderson said.
Thousand Oaks, he said, will offer a wider range of housing for employees and will reduce the commuting time for many workers.
About 40% of the company’s headquarters personnel live in the San Fernando and Conejo valleys, he said. Employees who do not live within a reasonable driving time of Thousand Oaks will receive relocation benefits, Anderson said.
The company held departmental meetings starting at 8 a.m. Monday to notify employees of the decision to move. After employees were told, the plans were announced publicly at a news conference.
It was not immediately known how many workers will move, how many will commute and how many will leave the company, Anderson said.
Employees said they had known for some time that the company was contemplating a move, so Monday’s announcement did not come as a shock. The company had provided a 24-hour phone hot line with recordings giving up-to-date information on the proposed move, they said.
Asked about the effect General Telephone’s decision will have on Santa Monica, City Manager John Jalili said that because the city has such a broad-based economy, the move will not have a great economic effect.
Although General Telephone employes 3,600 people in Santa Monica, the number of those workers affected by the move, about 2,000, make up only a small percentage of the city’s work force, he said.
And because the building is in a desirable location, Jalili said, new tenants probably will move in soon after General Telephone leaves. “The impact will be short-lived,” he said.
Both Jalili and Mayor Christine E. Reed expressed regrets that the telephone company is leaving Santa Monica.
“It’s a loss to the community,” Reed said. “They have been an excellent corporate citizen. . . . It will be Thousand Oaks’ gain.”
At Monday’s press conference, Anderson said that General Telephone is negotiating to buy the high-rise building in Santa Monica where it has maintained its headquarters since 1971. The company leases all but the ground floor of the 21-story building.
