PacifiCare Plans to Relocate Headquarters to Santa Ana

PacifiCare Health Systems will relocate its corporate headquarters and about 700 employees to the old FHP International Inc. complex in Santa Ana during the next five months.

The move is part of a series of facilities shuffles taking place as PacifiCare absorbs FHP, the health maintenance operation it acquired earlier this year.

The net result will be a transfer of nearly 800 employees to the company’s former headquarters complex in Cypress from facilities in Long Beach and Cerritos, where PacifiCare is phasing out old FHP leases.

PacifiCare’s Western Region headquarters, with about 3,000 employees, will remain in Cypress, and a corporate information systems unit with 750 workers will be based there as well. The complex contains 641,000 square feet of office space.

Transferring the corporate headquarters to Santa Ana’s Lake Center office complex, near South Coast Plaza, will give PacifiCare more room to house the combined PacifiCare-FHP administrative operations, the company said.

FHP had leased 161,000 square feet in three buildings in the Santa Ana complex for its own headquarters before being acquired by PacifiCare.

Additional corporate staff and about 200 employees of PacifiCare’s specialty products unit will move into the 82,000-square-foot former FHP learning and conference center on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa.

“We wanted to make the best use of our real estate and employee assets,” said Coy Baugh, vice president and treasurer of PacifiCare Health Systems. “The moves allow us to unite our California operations more quickly, save money, alleviate cramped quarters we had outgrown and consolidate our employees into Orange County locations where we have long-term leases.”

He said many employees will have shorter commutes because of the shifts.