PacTel Cellular to Leave New Quarters, Move to Bay Area : Transition: About 128 corporate workers will transfer north; 400 workers who operate the phone network will remain.
Only two months after expanding into a new headquarters building in Orange County, PacTel Cellular said Monday that it will move its corporate offices to San Francisco by year’s end.
The Irvine-based cellular phone company said it will transfer 128 corporate employees in Orange County to San Francisco, home of parent company Pacific Telesis Group. About 400 workers who operate the company’s cellular phone network in Los Angeles will remain in Orange County, the company said.
The PacTel move is part of a larger reorganization at Pacific Telesis, which is trying to transform itself from a loosely organized group of companies to a more centralized management structure, according to Brian Kidney, executive director of public policy for PacTel Corp., the cellular unit’s holding company. Pacific Telesis is aiming to slash expenses by $40 million over four years, he said.
Under the new structure, the administrative functions of PacTel Cellular, such as human resources and marketing, will be handled by the parent firm.
PacTel Cellular, which reported 1989 sales of $453 million, has been one of Orange County’s fastest-growing companies. It has more than 443,000 subscribers and operates cellular phone networks in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Atlanta and more than a dozen other cities.
To cope with a boom in cellular phone sales, the company has said it planned to boost its nationwide employment by 200 people, to 1,600, by year’s end.
Kidney said the relocation will not result in a major loss of jobs at PacTel Cellular. But some people may lose their jobs if they opt not to move to the Bay Area and cannot be placed in jobs elsewhere.
“We’re not prepared to say to each person what will happen to them,” Kidney said. “We are assessing the functions necessary to manage the company and will match the current staff according to the needs.”
PacTel Cellular also announced several top management changes Monday.
The company named Susan G. Swensen, 41, a Pacific Bell manager in San Diego, as president and chief operating officer of PacTel Cellular, replacing Jeffrey R. Hultman.
Hultman, 50, who has headed PacTel Cellular since January, 1988, has been promoted to vice president of technology coordination for Pacific Bell in San Francisco.
In addition, F. Craig Farrill, the No. 2 executive at PacTel Cellular in charge of network engineering, will become vice president of technology planning and development for PacTel Corp.
Kidney said it is uncertain what effect the relocation will have on the company’s hiring plans. The company’s Los Angeles operations staff will continue to occupy its office tower on Jamboree Road in Irvine. But Kidney said he did not know how the vacant space will be used when the headquarters staff leaves the building.
He said the company plans to go ahead with the multimillion-dollar conversion of its analog network in Southern California to digital transmission, or computer-compatible technology.
