Animal rights group to open large office in Echo Park

Back in October The Eastsider wrote about the mystery buyer - said to be a nonprofit involved with animals – of the former Sleep E-Z mattress showroom on Sunset Boulevard. Today, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or PETA confirmed that it will be moving about 55 employees – including some of its East Coast corporate staff – into the Art Deco style building on the western edge of Echo Park. Dan Shannon, the group’s director of Youth Outreach & Campaigns, said employees from its communications, campaigns, marketing, youth outreach, and corporate affairs departments will be housed in Echo Park. The new office will include about 40 people now working in PETA’s Norfolk, Virgina headquarters and another 14 in organization’s Los Angeles office, located in Silver Lake.

“These departments conceive of and carry out the eye- and headline-catching, envelope-pushing, public-influencing, and just plain quirky and interesting actions that have helped make PETA the most well known and effective of all animal protection groups,” Shannon said in an email. “Where better to do all of that than in the city that defines U.S. pop culture, and that cultivates big personalities and bigger ideas and sends them out through the big and small screen, via airwaves and magazine pages to every corner of the earth?”

The move is expected to be completed by the end of next summer.