Trib plans sale of Times site

15 November 2007 |permalink | email article

The buzz among major real estate brokers is that Tribune Co., after the agreement to be bought in an $8.2 billion leveraged buyout led by mogul Sam Zell is completed, intends to sell the square block housing The Los Angeles Times in the Civic Center, this blog has learned.

A developer would turn the property into high-end, mixed use, business and housing with the newspaper moving to another available location in the downtown core, something discussed in Los Angeles real estate circles for at least 16 years.

Then-publisher Harry Chandler and his son, Norman, who would later make the newspaper a nationally recognized force, opened the new Los Angeles Times building at First and Spring in 1934.

As publisher, Norman Chandler announced in 1948 that his Times Mirror Co. would launch a second Los Angeles daily, an afternoon tabloid called The Los Angeles Mirror. It was housed in an extension to the Times headquarters but closed in 1962.

Ironically, the historic block was known for decades as Times Mirror Square before Tribune Co. acquired the property in 2000 when the Chandler family sold its entire media interests. The KTLA property in Hollywood, already listed, is the site of the first TV station in the city.

Reaction to the projected sale is likely to provoke a major outcry from powerful civic preservationists.

UPDATE: 4:30 P.M.

LA Observed reports than Times publisher David Hiller denies my report that the LAT building is for sale. I never wrote that the site was for sale now, and certainly not until the leveraged buyout led by Zell is completed. That Hiller would admit that while the Times doesn’t own the building but likely will buy it next year is revealing - and makes my point about an eventual sale by the Tribune Co. to a major developer.

11/17 Update:  J.Romenesko picks up on the Trib story here.

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