Rockwell to Keep Home Office in O.C.

Rockwell International Corp., which recently sold most of its California operations, including its Seal Beach headquarters, to Boeing Co., said Friday that it will remain in Orange County.

Rockwell said it will move its corporate offices and about 150 employees this summer to the 21-story Plaza Tower building near the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The company leased three floors of the smoked-glass and stainless steel building from the Segerstrom Co. in a 12-year lease that some industry insiders value at about $1.6 million.

The lease itself isn’t a particularly big one, but business retention specialists say Rockwell’s decision to keep its world headquarters in Orange County bolsters ongoing efforts to attract other major employers and corporate operations to the county.

“This comes at a time when there is a lot of good news out there about Orange County, its economy and its quality of life, and this is just another feather in our cap,” said Ron Kirkpatrick, spokesman for the Orange County Business Council. “Helping to persuade them to stay is a major win for us.”

After the move, about 125 Rockwell corporate employees will remain at the former headquarters in Seal Beach, which the company sold to Boeing last month along with its defense and aerospace operations in a $3.2-billion deal. The Rockwell workers remaining in Seal Beach are under contract to Boeing to provide payroll, benefits and other personnel-related services to the newly acquired defense and aerospace units, which have been renamed Boeing North American Inc.

The sale left Rockwell with one California-based operation, its semiconductor unit in Newport Beach. Rockwell also has a Michigan-based automotive parts business, an avionics and communications unit in Iowa and a factory and industrial automation unit headquartered in Wisconsin.

The decision to relocate the company’s world headquarters to Costa Mesa came after a search that reportedly focused on sites throughout Southern California.

Rockwell moved its headquarters to Seal Beach from El Segundo in 1991.