Logix Federal Credit Union announces plans to move HQ to SCV

Logix Federal Credit Union — a longtime Burbank fixture with ties stretching back to the area’s aviation heyday — will relocate its headquarters to the Santa Clarita Valley, officials announced today.

The credit union, which has operated in Burbank for 78 years, confirmed its plans in an announcement Tuesday.

“After careful analysis of options that included alternate locations, as well as expansion on the current headquarters site, the Logix board determined the best long-term option is in the Santa Clarita Valley,” said Dave Styler, CEO of Logix, in a statement.

Founded as the Lockheed Aircraft Federal Credit Union in 1937 to serve employees of the aircraft company, the credit union has more than 150,000 members and more than $4 billion in assets, and currently has four branches in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“I think it’s a major testament to the Santa Clarita Valley as a leading business location,” said Holly Schroeder, the president and CEO of the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation. “They evaluated many alternative locations before they decided that we offered a great site for their long-term growth, a great quality of life and a good business environment for them.”

Logix has purchased a 12-acre site on Commerce Center Drive near Franklin Parkway, where it plans to build its new headquarters. Construction on the new headquarters will begin immediately, with completion expected in 2018, according to the release. The building is being designed and built by St. Louis-based NewGround and will be approximately 170,000 square feet.

Logix “needed a larger facility to accommodate its expanding employee population,” according to the release.

Though construction of the new headquarters will take a few years, Schroeder said Logix plans to bring “about 400 employees when they make the move.”

The site has growth potential, she added, and Logix could eventually swell to 800 employees.

“This will make them one of the largest private employers in the Santa Clarita Valley,” Schroeder said.

Though officially announced Tuesday, the move has been in the works for months. Schroeder said the EDC set up tours and held information sessions for Logix executives in a bid to woo them locally, Schroeder said. At one point, she said, the credit union ruled out moving to the Santa Clarita Valley. Things changed, though, and Logix later reached out to the EDC to revisit the idea, she said.

A clinching point in the talks, Schroeder said, seemed to be a meeting back in April when officials with the EDC, the city of Santa Clarita, county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich’s office, College of the Canyons, Newhall Land Development Inc. and “another large employer who had relocated to the Santa Clarita Valley” sat down with representatives from Logix.

“With the people that we had assembled in the room, there really wasn’t a question that their leadership, their search team could ask that we weren’t able to address,” Schroeder said.

“We think that was a pivotal moment for them, to have that level of responsiveness, and for them to comprehend how much the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation and the Santa Clarita Valley business community wanted them to join the business community here.”

Styler praised the work of the EDC in the relocation effort as well.

“The Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation, NewGround and the CBRE team were instrumental in our relocation decision,” he said. “The assistance they provided was unparalleled, and it was clear that Santa Clarita Valley will be a great home for our business and our employees.”

Schroeder said successfully recruiting such a large employer, and one with such ties to Southern California, was a big win for the EDC and the Santa Clarita Valley as a whole.

“We’re extraordinarily excited,” she said. “They are a tremendous company, a tremendous institution in Southern California with deep roots here. We’re thrilled to have a company of their stature be a member of our business community.”