The Orange County Register has cut back its local real estate presence, marking one of the more prominent examples of an OC company moving to more of a remote-working strategy.
The Register moved much of its area operations to Anaheim’s Axis office park in 2017, three years after its former parent company, Freedom Communications, sold its longtime home along Grand Avenue in Santa Ana.
It had been leasing about 40,000 square feet at Axis, according to prior Business Journal reports. Its former HQ office in Santa Ana ran some 173,000 square feet, though the paper didn’t occupy all that space.
The paper’s offices at Axis are now vacant, a recent visit to the office park next to Angels Stadium indicates. Brokerage data indicates the space is up for lease.
The Business Journal was told that Axis employees were offered the option of working in one of the other offices used by current owner Southern California News Group, or working from home.
Most Register employees had been working remotely since early 2020 due to COVID; many already worked from home prior to the pandemic.
SCNG has another Anaheim location, along Lewis Street. That building is remaining open, officials tell the Business Journal.
The Register is the largest daily paper in SCNG’s 11-paper portfolio.
It’s been an eventful time for medical-focused professors at UC Irvine—see our profiles on Philip Felgner and Kenneth Chang, making up part of this week’s Innovators of the Year focus—as well as for university fundraising execs, with Chapman’s Sheryl Bourgeois getting a new role at the Simon Foundation for Education and Housing; see page 1 for details.
More on health and fundraising: UCI recently announced a new $30 million gift, for a new medical research facility on its campus.
The soon-to-be-built 200,000-square-foot Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building aims to “expand the global reach and impact of the campus’s advanced cross-disciplinary teaching and translational research achievements,” the school said.
The funds come from the Falling Leaves Foundation, established by Prof. Robert A. Mah and Dr. Adeline Yen Mah in 2007. Adeline wrote a memoir about her life growing up in China, “Falling Leaves,” that sold more than a million copies.
The center, which will have wet labs, aims to “promote research and understanding of recent advances in medical science.” Robert Mah is a professor emeritus at UCLA who taught environmental microbiology and has two species of archaebacterial, as well as a genus, named in his honor for his research. Adeline Mah, who was chief of anesthesia at West Anaheim Community Hospital, predicts that every disease will eventually be treatable, saying, “We are at the dawn of a therapeutic revolution.”
The couple “have led remarkable lives of innovation including teaching and research in microbiology and in clinical care and have left lasting impact in their fields,” said Steve Goldstein, UCI vice chancellor for health affairs.
The new facility will join the new Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences and Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and Health Sciences Hall in UCI’s Health Sciences district.
