Creative Talent Lures GM Back to a Valley Site
This comeback-trail community known more for auto parts than auto design just happens to be in the right place at the right time.
As the entertainment industry has become more concentrated in the southeast San Fernando Valley, it has brought to North Hollywood and surrounding areas a wealth of artistic and creative talent, not to mention easy access to the Hollywood back shop.
Those factors, plus personal lobbying by Mayor Richard Riordan, helped North Hollywood win out over tonier communities in Pasadena and the Westside when General Motors began looking for a site for a new cutting-edge design center.
Officials from GM, the world’s largest auto maker, confirmed Wednesday that the company will locate its new advanced design center--one of only two such concept centers in the world--on the site of the old Oroweat bakery, just outside the city’s North Hollywood redevelopment area.
Larry Faloon, GM’s director of industrial design, explained that North Hollywood’s proximity to the region’s entertainment and media companies, and the highly skilled workers who cluster nearby, figured prominently in the company’s decision to locate its first U.S. advanced design satellite center here. (The other is in Birmingham, England).
“We are making an important transition into the digital world,” said Faloon, who was in Los Angeles on Wednesday for the announcement and the annual L.A. Auto Show.
“More and more of our design work involves computer graphic systems. We wanted to be in an area that was centrally located so we could have access to all of the enormous amounts of talent that’s packed into the California entertainment industry.”
Faloon said that the building, with its large room size and unique architecture, beat out more than 20 other properties the company looked at from Simi Valley to Orange County.
“There were some interesting choices. This has great architectural character and the open spaces that we need,” he said, adding that little remodeling would be necessary.
Faloon said that only a few of the estimated 30- to 35-member design team to be stationed at the site, located on Biloxi Avenue between Magnolia and Chandler boulevards, will be transplanted from the company’s main design center in Michigan.
“We hope to build our staff from California talent that frankly was not interested in living in Detroit,” he said.
Indeed, GM announced that the director of the still-unnamed facility will be Frank Saucedo, who was involved in auto design work at the joint Volkswagen-Audi studio in Simi Valley.
And even though the number of workers in North Hollywood pales in comparison to the number of jobs the Valley lost when General Motors shuttered its Van Nuys production plant in 1992, city officials stress that the move will still bring economic benefits to the area.
“The number of jobs is not the reason we think this is important,” said Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo, whose business team helped broker the deal. “This is one of the largest companies, period. It decided that its design [facility] for North America will be located in North Hollywood, in the San Fernando Valley. That’s what we think is newsworthy.”
Faloon would not give a salary range for the North Hollywood workers. But officials with the city of Los Angeles said the move should bring in highly skilled and highly paid staffers.
“I think we could safely say that these are not minimum-wage jobs,” said Faloon.
Even officials in Thousand Oaks, which lost Southern California’s last GM design facility in 1996, conceded that North Hollywood, with its centralized location, makes sense for companies that will need to do business from the San Gabriel Valley to Orange County.
“There are no compelling reasons not to be [in Newbury Park]”, said Gary Wartik, manager of economic development for Thousand Oaks. “On the other hand, if they wanted to be centrally located, it’s understandable that they may want to be somewhere in the L.A. metro area.”
Delgadillo, who said Riordan personally called GM officials to lobby for the North Hollywood site, noted that when the design center was in Ventura County, “they used to have to drive from Newbury Park to North Hollywood and Burbank for supplies.”
Now, he said, the new center will have easier access to suppliers, some of whom may relocate to the area, which is undergoing a city-sponsored metamorphosis.
Just west of the site is the 750-acre North Hollywood redevelopment project area, which is home to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and may eventually hold a major studio-office project proposed by developer J. Allen Radford.
The Walt Disney Co.’s online division is also headquartered in North Hollywood.
Built in the 1930s, the GM building originally housed production facilities for Oroweat Baking Co.
Faloon and Delgadillo said the facility is owned by Sports Tutor Inc., a company that makes machines that toss out balls, such as tennis, soccer and volleyballs, for use during practice sessions.
Officials with Sports Tutor did not return phone calls. However, Faloon said that GM has signed a 10-year lease with the company and plans to begin using some of the 50,000 square feet of space this month. He said that Sports Tutor will move out and that he hopes the GM facility will be up and running by April.
Unlike other announced developments in the North Hollywood area, this one will be implemented without city subsidies, according to both Faloon and Delgadillo.
The city’s involvement, Delgadillo said, will be to help ensure that the permitting and reconstruction process goes smoothly.
In exchange, the city gets bragging rights, spinoff business and continued development in an area struggling to shed its shabby image.
“Economically . . . this gives North Hollywood a strong and serious boost in its marketability to the creative community,” Delgadillo said. “This is another movement in a direction that we think is very positive for North Hollywood.”
* NEW DESIGNS
GM hires designer from Simi Valley studio to head new center in NoHo. C1
