Terminal Data to Sell Simi Facility

Unloading what has been an albatross for the company, Terminal Data said it agreed to sell its 280,000-square-foot Simi Valley headquarters to Gibraltar Savings for $21 million.

Michael Rothbart, Terminal Data’s chairman, said the Beverly Hills-based savings institution is likely to try and develop the property further. The 44-acre hillside site at the northeast corner of Madera Road and the Simi Valley Freeway contains 23.5 buildable acres, he said.

Rothbart said the sale would slash Terminal Data’s costs and make it possible to become profitable soon. He added, however, that a $1.5-million loss on the sale would partially offset a $3.5-million gain from the sale of the company’s Warner Center facility last year.

Rothbart said that if all goes well the sale will close next summer, but that it is subject to approval by Gibraltar’s board and Terminal Data’s mortgage lender. In addition, the buyer will first consult Simi Valley officials.

“They plan more buildings and want to see what the city is amenable to,” he said.

He also said that if certain unspecified conditions are met, Gibraltar would lease half the facility until the sale closes. Terminal Data now occupies the other half, and Gibraltar has agreed to let it stay on for up to 18 months after the closing, Rothbart said. He would not disclose any other details of the lease agreement.

Terminal Data had not yet found a new home, he said.

John Wiliamson, an executive vice president at Gibraltar, declined comment on the acquisition, but Rothbart said the savings institution would probably move its back-room operations to the Simi Valley facility from North Hollywood.

The $21-million purchase price was a good buy for Gibraltar, but was not an outright steal, said Bruce Kusada, a leasing agent with the Charles Dunn Co. in Encino.

Rothbart founded Terminal Data in 1968 and helped build it into a leading maker of cameras and optical equipment for high-speed microfilmers, sorters, and machines that photograph bank checks. But the company lost $3.8 million for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 on an 11% drop in sales to $31 million.

A major reason for the loss was the high cost of its unoccupied Simi Valley building, which Rothbart built to accommodate growth he believed would come from increasing sales of equipment used to store documents on optical disks. But the technology caught on more slowly than expected.

When Terminal Data could not sell or rent the Simi Valley facility last year, the company sold its former headquarters at 21221 Oxnard St. in Warner Center to Daily News owner Jack Kent Cooke, who plans to move most of the paper’s operations there.

The price, $8.35 million, was widely described as a bargain for Cooke, who recently sold part of the Daily News headquarters in Van Nuys to Oxnard developer Dan Voss, Jr. for $2.35 million. For his money Voss also got an 1,800-square-foot storefront on Friar Street in Van Nuys.

Kusada, the leasing agent who represented Voss, said the deal closed Dec. 29, in time to take advantage of more favorable tax laws in 1986.

The Daily News will stay in Van Nuys until April, Kusada said, when it will move to the former Terminal Data building in Warner Center.