By ROBERT BEAMESDERFER
The boxes and moving vans are waiting. The first group of employees soon will be on its way. The new building is ready. Irving, Texas, waits with open arms.
The migration of Fluor Corp.’s headquarters from Aliso Viejo is rounding the final bend.
At 1 Enterprise Drive in Aliso Viejo, effects of the move are subtle for now. The operation is taking place in three phases, said Keith Stephens, a Fluor spokesman in Dallas.
Fluor expects to have about 170 workers in Irving: 60 from Aliso Viejo, 20 from other spots and 60 hired in Dallas. Another 25 spots or so still are open.
About 100 headquarters jobs have been cut with the move. Another 200 or so jobs have been shifted from Orange County to elsewhere in Fluor. Some people have left the company rather than make the move.
Fluor, which now employs 1,475 people in OC, is leaving behind some corporate workers in Aliso Viejo. About 1,175 people in Fluor’s engineering operation are staying in Aliso Viejo and Long Beach.
The first Fluor group in Texas is set to settle in by the end of the month. The move should be completed by June, Stephens said.
At that point, OC officially will lose its second-largest public company by yearly sales. Fluor had sales of $13 billion last year, second only to Santa Ana’s Ingram Micro Inc.
The engineering and construction services company got its start in Santa Ana in 1912.
Fluor is moving to Texas to be closer to customers in the oil and chemical sectors. Chief Executive Alan Boeck-mann also is said to have ties to Texas.
Boeckmann himself moved to Dallas in October. He’s been working from his new office, which still is getting final touches.
All of Fluor’s top brass is moving. But not everyone’s going.
“We lost some people we’d rather not lose, without a doubt,” Boeckmann told the Dallas Morning News in March. “But we also have been extremely pleased with the hiring we’ve done here.”
Since the shift was announced a year ago, the operation has moved quickly on two fronts: building a new headquarters and showing those who might move what the Dallas suburb is like.
Selling Irving
Once the decision to move was made, Fluor had Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Dallas office make a presentation to employees considering the move.
A big part of that presentation, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s Brian Jensen, was a stereotype-buster DVD.
Jensen, a native of the area, said he sought to dispel the notion that the Dallas area is flat and populated by people packing six-shooters.
The presentation also used Internet satellite photos to show areas and sought to answer questions about crime, school districts and housing.
Those who are moving will work from a new $40 million, 136,000-square-foot glass and masonry building in the tony Las Colinas business section of Irving.
“It’s quite a great headquarters,” Stephens said. “A lot of thought was given to detail. It’s a nice mix of Texas tradition and some global touches.”
Las Colinas “is probably the most Califor-nia-feel pocket of our community,” Jensen said.
Dallas-based Koll Development Co. built Fluor’s new headquarters.
“We literally started moving dirt on July 30,” about six weeks after Fluor announced its move, said Don Mills, senior vice president of construction for Koll. “We were actually in the middle of the design when they started moving dirt.”
Fluor, which built its former headquarters in Irvine before moving to Aliso Viejo in 1999, had a hand in the design of the building and managed construction.
“We walked the site a couple of afternoons with our architect and then adapted the building to the site,” Koll Chief Executive Steve Van Amburgh said.
The headquarters was done in about half the time it typically takes, according to Mills. Irving officials, anxious to house another Fortune 500 company, helped with getting permits and completing inspections, he said.
City Courting
The city formed a task force to move the project along, Irving Mayor Herbert Gears said.
“We are very proud of that aspect,” he said. “We decided up front to be as aggressive as possible. We’re hoping to do this on a consistent basis.”
Irving is home to ExxonMobil Corp., which topped this year’s Fortune 500 list, and Kimberly-Clark Corp., which ranked No. 140. Fluor ranked No. 169.
Fluor’s departure leaves four Fortune 500 companies in OC: Ingram Micro; Santa Ana-based title insurer First American Corp.; Newport Beach-based life insurer Pacific Life Insurance Co. (a private company counted by Fortune because it reports financial results for policyholders); and Irvine-based homebuilder Standard Pacific Corp.
Beamesderfer is a freelance writer and former Los Angeles Times editor.
