Tri-Star’s N.Y. Operations Moving to Burbank in ’89

Tri-Star Pictures, created as an instant “major” studio in New York six years ago by heavyweight partners Home Box Office, Columbia Pictures and CBS, announced Thursday that it will shift its New York operations to Burbank.

By mid-1989, Tri-Star executives expect to be headquartered in the high-rise Studio Plaza now under construction next to the Burbank Studios, where a sister company--Columbia Pictures--is located.

Since a merger last December, Tri-Star and Columbia have been operating as independent subsidiaries of Columbia Pictures Entertainment, which is 49%-owned by Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola owns the new Burbank building as well as the Fifth Avenue office building in Manhattan where Columbia Pictures Entertainment is headquartered.

The corporate parent intends to remain in New York, according to Victoria S. Cohen, vice president of corporate communications. “Every corporate officer who is currently located in our corporate office in New York will remain here,” Cohen said of the CPE staff.

The move affects Tri-Star’s marketing, distribution and publicity operations and is expected to be completed in the first three months of 1989. Tri-Star President David A. Matalon said he has asked his top people “for a quick answer” about whether they are willing to move and will “take as many of the executives as possible.”

Matalon said: “It took me a lot of soul-searching, but frankly, (the move) was inevitable,” noting that Tri-Star’s production has been based in Los Angeles from the start. Tri-Star production executives currently occupy several floors of a Century City office high-rise.