Photo courtesy of Port of Long Beach
Last week, the Long Beach Harbor Department started an arduous task: moving its nearly 300 administrative employees into new temporary headquarters, one that is nearly 10 miles from the Port’s nearest operations.
Since 1960, the Port has called the building at 925 Harbor Plaza home, however, concerns over its seismic instability and small size, which has proven inadequate for the current pool of the Port’s staff, led officials to seek office space elsewhere. After plans for both constructing a new $220M headquarters and purchasing space in the World Trade Center fell through, the Port looked northeast and purchased the airport-adjacent building at 4801 Airport Plaza Drive for nearly $15M in late 2012.
With an estimated overall price tag of $30M, including rennovations and move-in costs, the former Boeing facility will serve as interim headquarters for the Port of Long Beach while arrangements can be made to construct a new permanent office closer to Downtown.
At the time of the purchase, the Port’s former Executive Director Chris Lytle defended the choice to move headquarters near the airport: “It gets employees out of a building that’s not the safest and allows us to put the employees in a better situation,” he said.
The move into the eight-story building began on Valentines Day and will continue in four phases through March 9, when all mail will officially be forwarded to the new address.
Read more:
- P-T: Interim Port Headquarters Head to Long Beach Airport
- Port of Long Beach Searches Interim Headquarters
- Long Beach Hopes to Lure New Occidental Petroleum Company to Long Beach
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