Mysterious Building MBCA

[George Grena]

Greetings! I’ve been studying the history of buildings at or near Space Park via TRW phone books kept in TRA’s E2 archive. One named “MBCA” has puzzled me because I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere. It was shown on maps from 1992 to 2000 in the southwest corner of Rosecrans & Aviation with an address of 3601 Aviation (recently occupied by Fisker, the EV automaker that went bankrupt earlier this year). While it’s tempting to think the abbreviation simply stood for “Manhattan Beach, California,” does anyone know what it actually meant or what kind of business activity TRW conducted there? Thanks in advance,
George

[Michael Palmer]

Hi George, I worked in Bldg. MBCA from 1994 to 1997 as a staff auditor. (Yes, MBCA did stand for Manhattan Beach, California). The only TRW occupant was Corporate Internal Audit. Our boss, VP Warren Johnston, wanted a separate facility so that we wouldn’t be subject to moves from time-to-time over the years.

[George Grena]

Wow! Thank you so much, Michael, for solving that mystery! I had almost given up hope since they’re obviously not making any new TRW employees nowadays.
George

[Michael Palmer]

Just to confirm, it was/is the same building where Fisker was located. Working in that building was a mixed blessing. If one got there early, there was covered parking! However in other ways it was behind the times; it did not get email until a year or two after S&EG and SIG had already had that, and even then the communications network was not that great. The phones did not have voice mail; they had mini answering machines that one had to remember to “rewind” after listening to messages.

There was an empty lot just to the west of MBCA; we would occasionally see men in hazmat suits come and check a couple of places over there. We don’t know what had been there in the past. The Fairchild Industries building was gone by then; it was located further west along Rosecrans, near where Cafe Rio is now.

At the time one of the other tenants in MBCA was Tecolote Research; that firm later moved to El Segundo. Tom Walker, formerly of TRW, worked there for several years.

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