Technicolor to close Flower Street facility less than two years after opening it

Technicolor Inc. plans to close down its Flower Street facility in Glendale and lay off 50 employees by March 28, less than two years after opening the location, according to a recent state filing.

Plans for the layoffs and closure, filed with the California Employment Development Department, will shutter the 40,000-square-foot lab where the company moved roughly 100 film-processing jobs in July 2011.

Technicolor opened the facility after closing a North Hollywood location earlier in 2011.

The Glendale site was seen as a natural choice because of the city’s push to rent out industrial properties in the San Fernando Road Creative Corridor to companies in the entertainment industry and because of its proximity to DreamWorks Animation and Walt Disney Co.’s Creative Campus.

Technicolor provides visual effects, animation and post-production services for motion pictures, television shows and other media clients.

The company laid off 50 employees at the Flower Street facility in January 2012, less than a year after it opened.

While Technicolor representatives declined to comment on Wednesday, Don Nakamoto, executive director of the Verdugo Workforce Investment Board, said the city assisted with the previous downsizing and was aware that Technicolor is going through a period of instability.

Nakamoto said as the entertainment industry shifts to digital video rather than film, traditional film-processing firms are getting squeezed.

“Working with film is just so much more costly compared to digital, so [companies] are trying to come up with a model in this new world of entertainment,” he said. “It’s been that way for a number of post-production companies, and Technicolor is not immune to that situation.”

The company has another facility in Glendale on Gardena Avenue as well as locations in Burbank and Hollywood.

City spokesman Tom Lorenz said Glendale officials aren’t expecting the property to sit unoccupied for long because the vacancy rate for industrial properties in the San Fernando corridor is less than 1%.

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