At Disney-Tujunga

And what the hell is "Disney-Tujunga", you ask?

Has the Mouse moved up to the small Crescenta Valley community below the Angeles Crest? Where bikers, and those who can't afford to live in La Canada, frolic?

Actually, no. It's a large Diz Co.-owned building west of the Bob Hope Airport (the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena flight facility) on Tujunga Avenue in North Hollywood. I was there for the first time today. ...

The neighborhood is a long way from the Ranch District of Burbank, the location of the Hat Building. Disney-Tujumga sits in the middle of an industrial area with lots of movie supply warehouses, car repair shops, and other lower-rent establishments you would expect to find clustered near one end of an airport runway.

The Disney building is actually pretty nice. It sits behind fences and a guard shack, and houses Disney Imagineering, storage areas, and now Walt Disney Animation Studios. The staffs for two upcoming features began moving in a couple of weeks back, and a productioneer told me there is room for upwards of 400+ people.

Disney-Tujunga is on two floors. (The building is two-story, so kind of makes sense, no?) There aren't a lot of enclosed offices, but plenty of wide open floor-space and airy cubicles. There don't appear to be many eating establishments nearby, but nobody voiced discontent over this reality. As one person said, "It is what it is. We have nice jobs." There were food trucks out in the parking lot.

Walt-Disney-Animation-Studios-On-Tujunga-Avenue will probably be in existence for the next eighteen to twenty-eight months. The setup will continue while the Hat Building on scenic Riverside Drive is getting refurbished. Features will also have a unit or two (but smaller) at DisneyToon Studios in Glendale, though there's a lot less space over there, so more production action will take place in North Hollywood.

Artists and administrators will be working at the Hat through the entire renovation, just not a whole lot of them. Hopefully drifting dust will be kept to a minimum.