NEW YORK (AP) – WarnerMedia said Monday it will sell the iconic CNN Center in downtown Atlanta, but that doesn’t mean the network will leave the city.
The network will consolidate its Atlanta workforce into a series of offices across the city, the same office campus where CNN was first located when Ted Turner founded it in the early 1980s.
“Downtown Atlanta has seen a huge investment and is fast becoming an entertainment destination,” Pascal Desroches, chief financial officer of WarnerMedia, said in a memo to staff. “The CNN Center is of great value to a third party that specializes in such developments.”
The CNN Center has been a mix of offices and commercial premises.
The departure of CNN employees will be a gradual process. The company said it plans to lease the offices of the CNN Center for five years as its move to the so-called Techwood campus is completed.
The sale had been under consideration for some time, but was suspended pending the company’s merger with AT&T, the company said.
Some of CNN’s television operations, including the network’s primetime, occur from the company’s new offices at the Hudson Yards development in New York. But the network’s daytime shows, as well as CNN’s global network, occur outside of Atlanta.
In his memo, Desroches stressed that the move should in no way suggest that WarnerMedia is less committed to Atlanta, noting that renovations have already been made at Techwood’s offices.
“We believe that the long-term benefit of being in one place will be a more collaborative workforce,” he wrote.
