One of the country’s top electrical contractors is moving its headquarters to Orange County.
Sasco is set to consolidate its offices in a move to Fullerton from Cerritos.
The company signed a $17 million, 10-year lease for about 221,000 square feet at 2750 Moore Ave. earlier this month.
Sasco, which works with developers and general contractors to set up and install electrical systems for office buildings, hotels, malls, hospitals and other big construction projects, has yearly sales of about $400 million, according to Jerry Jordan, executive director of Sasco’s preconstruction and sales group.
“Our goal is to be the best electrical contractor in Orange County,” Jordan said.
The company outgrew its Cerritos facility, according to Jordan. It needed more warehouse space to house its tools, equipment and allow for the planning stages of a job.
The company is set to have about 215 workers here, in addition to more than 1,000 mechanical engineers and electricians it contracts with for jobs.
About 165 of those workers are moving from other offices, including in Santa Ana, Newport Beach and Sacramento.
The move is expected to wrap up in early November.
The company has been in Cerritos, at a 87,000-square-foot site, for about 20 years.
It owns all of its buildings and plans to sell them off after the move, Jordan said.
It took nearly three years to find the right building, he said.
The company had specific requirements. It needed about 50,000 square feet for offices and a big warehouse with docks for shipments.
Sasco looked at sites in the Inland Empire, north of Los Angeles and even San Diego.
The company had one major stipulation: The new headquarters had to be close to public transportation, Jordan said.
The site is close to a Metrolink station in Fullerton, the busiest in the county, and another that just opened in neighboring Buena Park.
North County was a central spot for most of Sasco’s workers, who come from as far as San Fernando Valley, Corona and downtown L.A., Jordan said.
“We want our employees to have the ability to use mass transit,” he said.
Sasco has buses to shuttle commuters to and from the train stations.
Sasco spends a lot of time preassembling and testing parts and wiring systems before installing them at a site, Jordan said. It helps keep costs down, he said.
“You need a lot of room for that,” Jordan said.
Its biggest project to date: Revamping the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Jordan pegged the contract at about $122 million.
Other big-ticket jobs include the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which brought in about $87 million, and a four-phase job for Microsoft Corp.’s headquarters outside Seattle that was nearly $100 million.
Sasco has been working for years in OC.
It’s done major work at Disneyland Park, neighboring theme park California Adventure and Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, outfitting the electrical systems for the hotel, rides and other attractions.
It’s currently working on the expansion of UCI Medical Center in Orange.
It’s also currently working on Pacific City, a big hotel, stores and restaurants project that’s going up near Huntington beach pier.
The city of Anaheim is a customer, too. Sasco did Angel Stadium of Anaheim and the convention center. It’s also working on GardenWalk, a hotel, stores and restaurants development across from Disneyland.
Real estate developers, including Santa Ana-based Caribou Industries Inc. and The Irvine Company of Newport Beach, are big sources of business.
All of this adds up to Sasco being an attractive acquisition target.
But the company isn’t for sale, Jordan said.
“I probably get 10 calls a month from private equity guys,” he said. “Everyone is trying to buy Sasco. But we would never sell this company. We have a commitment to our employees.”
Privately held Sasco has a traditional, “values company” approach that looks to a guiding ideology.
The company takes lessons from Jim Collins’ management book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap.”
Workers are made “partners” and are expected to hire and retrain someone else if they want to retire, Jordan said.
