Calabasas : Former Lockheed HQ Out of the Loop

All eyes were on Lockheed Martin Corp. Monday as the newly merged aerospace giant announced it would slash 12,000 jobs worldwide in a massive consolidation plan, but the company’s Calabasas staff was, for once, strangely on the sidelines.

That’s because, as the firm previously announced, the huge Calabasas facility will slowly be emptied as scores of middle managers and support staff who work there are shifted to Bethesda, Md., leaving only about 50 employees behind in what is now a West Coast regional office. These include staff in the human resources, legal, communications and ethics and business practices departments. Soon, even they will be moved to a smaller facility that will probably be located not far from the Calabasas offices.

So as Lockheed Martin employees elsewhere celebrated their good fortune or mourned their bad news, the vast lobby in Calabasas was eerily silent, the parking lot full of empty slots.

The communications division, once the center of the action whenever the Lockheed Corp. was in the news, had a staff of just one on Monday. That was Maureen Curow, who is now working for a boss in Bethesda she’s never met. Curow had to call Bethesda to remind them to touch base about the layoffs story. “I was like, ‘Hello? Remember California?’ ”

Lockheed Martin gave layoff notices to about 100 of the 250 employees who worked at the former Calabasas headquarters last summer. The rest were offered transfers or told they would be shifted to different offices in California when the time came. About 150 are still working in the offices behind the echoing lobby. Many are in the process of moving or finishing final projects before packing up and heading east.

The 326,000-square-foot headquarters building is for sale, and a few potential buyers have come to look at it recently, Curow said. Real estate agents have estimated its worth at between $32 million and $49 million.

The Calabasas office has been in a state of transition for months, Curow said, and Monday’s announcement was nothing new. “I’m just waiting to land,” she said.

* LOCKHEED MARTIN CUTBACKS

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