Ford Motor Co. is shutting down a design studio it operates in Irvine, resulting in 263 layoffs. The closure of Ford Design Studio, located at 3 Glen Bell Way in Irvine, was announced in a June 30 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, letter.
Ford Design Studio will close on Nov. 30 and affect all employees at the site. The Michigan-based automaker did offer all 263 employees continued employment at a Ford facility in either Long Beach or Dearborn, Michigan. Employees electing to stay in Southern California would report to one of two Long Beach locations this month.
Ford Motor Co., in its WARN letter, said five employees who were offered relocation to Dearborn said no and will be terminated on Aug. 31. Most of the employees affected by the WARN letter – 92 – were hardware development engineers.
Ford’s West Coast operations were based on Glen Bell Way in Irvine, the same street where fast food restaurant chain Taco Bell is based. The automaker scaled back its operations on Glen Bell Way in 2009.
LoopNet, a division of CoStar, shows the 87,639-square-foot Ford Building at 3 Glen Bell Way as being up for lease. The industrial space with about 30,000 square feet of office space and 20,000 square feet of showroom is being marketed by Avison Young.