Leaving Building, but Stuck With Terms : Lease Is Loose End for Informatics

Closing the Woodland Hills headquarters of Informatics General Corp. will do more than throw as many as 60 people out of work. It will leave the future owner of Informatics, Sterling Software of Dallas, with a $12-million lease it doesn’t need.

The closing also will leave the building Informatics was to have occupied without its anchor tenant.

On top of everything else, it irks Jack Spound.

The Spound Co., of which Spound is president, built the three-story, 90,000-square-foot structure at 21900 Burbank Blvd. Informatics has a 15-year, $12-million lease for the top floor of the $15-million project, which was called the Informatics Building.

But now Sterling is closing Informatics’ local headquarters, so neither Sterling nor Informatics will be moving in. Sterling’s chairman, Samuel Wyly, said confidently last week that the building was no problem, because Sterling has struck a deal to sell it.

Wyly was wrong, as it turns out.

‘Not Ours to Sell’

“It is not ours to sell,” he conceded later. “If anybody wants to buy it, they should call Mr. Spound.”

Spound agrees wholeheartedly.

“We own the building,” he said emphatically. “What they do have is an ironclad 15-year lease for 30,000 square feet.”

Meanwhile, Sterling is looking for a subtenant, and thus competing against its landlord, which is also seeking tenants, in a soft market. Spound said Sterling also has been trying to negotiate a way out.

The office-space market in the Los Angeles area is notoriously soft, and Spound said the task of leasing the structure is made even more difficult by the loss of its chief tenant.

Nevertheless, he said, he has rented 10,000 more square feet and is optimistic about the remainder.

Sterling, which acquired Informatics with a $27-per-share offer, is consolidating Informatics’ headquarters operations into its own headquarters in Dallas. The takeover is expected to cost Sterling $140 million, Wyly said.