Hawthorne Faces Losing a Sign of the Times--Mattel’s

The landmark Mattel Toys sign, for years visible to motorists traveling past Hawthorne on the San Diego Freeway, may soon be history.

A Mattel Inc. spokesman said Thursday that the company is negotiating to buy a 15-story, 330,000-square-foot office building in neighboring El Segundo to replace its aging corporate headquarters in Hawthorne. The company will sell its Hawthorne property if it moves to El Segundo.

The company, founded in Hawthorne 44 years ago, hopes to make the move by 1991.

“This specific El Segundo site is the focus of our activity at this time,” Mattel spokesman Glenn Bozarth said Thursday. “It’s a site that makes a lot of sense to us.”

Hawthorne City Manager Kenneth Jue said the city will miss Mattel.

“It’s sort of a sad day,” Jue said. “Mattel has been an identity here in Hawthorne since they started.”

Mattel, visible because of the giant, illuminated sign perched on top of its building, owns about nine acres and leases 26 more acres next to the San Diego Freeway. Toys, including the company’s hugely successful Barbie doll, were once assembled at the site until manufacturing operations were moved overseas years ago.

Hawthorne officials recently earmarked the land for a massive redevelopment project, and Mattel had said at first it planned to renovate and occupy its six-story office building as part of the project. The redevelopment project calls for retail and office buildings, restaurants and a hotel to be built on the property owned and leased by Mattel.

However, Mattel decided to pursue buying the El Segundo building and transferring its 1,300 employees there because of the disruptions associated with construction, company officials said. Also, Bozarth said, it is “more economical” for the company to move than to stay.

The building that Mattel is negotiating to buy is at Grand Avenue and Continental Boulevard. Vacant since it was constructed in 1987, it was part of a larger project known as the Grandway and included a hotel and restaurant.

Mattel said it would not discuss details of its negotiations with the building’s owner, Sutter Hill Ltd. of Northern California.

As for Mattel, it wants to have a rooftop sign in El Segundo, too. Indeed, it has asked the city’s Planning Commission to allow it to erect at least two 500-square-foot signs on top of the building to display the company’s name and logo.