See also: Demand Media, eHow Factory in Santa Monica, Already Worth $1.9 Billion: Retarded Web Searches Prevail and A Santa Monica Trailer Park — and Its Senior Residents — Face Off With Fancy New Development.

Demand Media–parent to content farm eHow.com and listicle machine Cracked.com–announced a deal to move its headquarters to south Santa Monica yesterday. The company has signed a long-term lease worth $23 million on the 26th Street digs vacated by MTV at the end of last year.

When Demand went public last year the SEO-savvy media empire (built on the backs of articles like “How to pull on a Speedo“) was valued at $1.87 billion…more than the New York Times Company.

The 52,000 square-foot building will house more than 300 employees, who the company says are now spread among several different buildings in downtown Santa Monica.

The neighborhood is already home to Redbull, EMI, Universal Music, Yahoo!, and the site of a planned Lionsgate production facility approved by the Santa Monica City Council last summer.

All those businesses are within walking distance of what will be the Bergamot stop on the planned extension of the Expo Line light rail, which MTA estimates could roll into Santa Monica as soon as 2015.

The neighborhood is also home to the Village Trailer Park, the subject of this week's cover story, Trailer Park Blues. Developer Marc Luzzatto would like to build dense transit-oriented development (TOD) to house employees of the nearby companies on a property currently occupied by the elderly residents of the vintage trailer park. The Santa Monica City Council is set to consider the development agreement on July 24.


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