A giant inflatable shark named Chompie has occasionally graced Discovery Communications’ Silver Spring headquarters during Shark Week over the years. (Photo by Vitalii Folomeev)

Discovery Inc., a communications company that owns popular cable channels like Animal Planet and TLC, announced on Thursday that it signed a lease on a new office space in Silver Spring, Maryland ahead of its official headquarters’ move to New York City.

The company also announced on Thursday that it has sold its current headquarters, also in Silver Spring, to a joint venture of Foulger-Pratt and Cerebus Capital Management. They are planning to upgrade the building for new tenants, according to Washington Business Journal.

Discovery’s forthcoming office space is 60,000 square feet in the Silver Spring Metro Plaza, about 0.2 miles away from its current location. It will house “select network and support functions, as well as select other functions such as government relations, that are logically based in the Metropolitan D.C. area,” according to a press release from the company.

Last month, the company filed a work adjustment filing with the state of Maryland stating that it would lay off 212 employees from the Silver Spring headquarters on October 1.

Discovery’s headquarters has been housed in Silver Spring for many years, but, about six months after acquiring Scripps Networks Interactive, the company announced that it would be moving to New York in January. They plan to be there by January 2019. About 1,300 people currently work at the Silver Spring headquarters, and some of them will relocate to other company locations, including those in Sterling, Virginia, according to Bethesda Beat. Others, presumably, will be working at the new Silver Spring location.

“Discovery was founded in Maryland and since 1991 has been part of the Montgomery County community, so the decision to move the global headquarters is one that was not made lightly,” David Leavy, Chief Corporate Operations and Communications Officer, said in the release. “We are excited to be able to keep a presence in Silver Spring.”

It’s unclear how many more positions will be cut ahead of the move, or how many workers will move to the new office space in Silver Spring.

Previously:
Discovery Will Lay Off More Than 200 Workers In Silver Spring