Transworld Leaving O'side, Surfing To Carlsbad

OCEANSIDE ---- Transworld Media, an action sports magazine publisher long associated with Oceanside, will relocate to Carlsbad early next year, employees said this week.The company, which employs 125-150 people in north Oceanside, plans to move into a larger space in the Carlsbad Airport Business Park, said Stacey Ingenito, Transworld's publicity manager."We've been in this building quite a long time, and it's time to upgrade," Ingenito said Tuesday from the company's headquarters in a burnt-orange building in an industrial area near the Oceanside airport.It will be a big shift for Transworld, a popular niche publisher that has called Oceanside home since Larry Balma, a manufacturer of skateboard parts, started TransWorld Skateboarding magazine in 1983."It's going to be kind of a hard thing" to see the Oceanside building shuttered, said Balma's wife, Louise, a former Transworld employee and city planning commissioner. "But they're going to a new building ---- it's going to be all fresh and clean, and everybody's all excited."The company has had several ownership changes over the years. It's now part of the Bonnier Corp., a privately held Swedish media conglomerate.Ingenito declined to discuss Transworld's finances, but she said that the publisher's seven action sports magazines reach 4 million readers per month.Employees put together four of the titles ---- including Transworld Surf, Transworld Skateboarding and Transworld Snowboarding ---- in the Oceanside office, she said.By moving to the Carlsbad building at 2052 Corte del Nogal, the company will gain about 2,000 square feet, Ingenito said. The company plans to build an indoor street-style skatepark there for company business and events.Cynthia Haas, Carlsbad's economic development manager, said she wasn't aware of Transworld's plan but was "thrilled to hear they're coming.""I think it's a great fit for Carlsbad," Haas said. "We've sort of become a little bit of a recreation capital."For Marc Hostetter, Transworld's creative director, the move will be "bittersweet."The new ZIP code is great, he said, but it'll be tough to leave the eclectic Oceanside offices, where knickknacks abound and cubicles have been fashioned from multicolored hollow-core doors."There's just something blue-collar about this place," he said Tuesday.Balma said she recently stopped by to help inventory pieces of Transworld history ---- trophies, vintage banners, shelves made from the scrap wood of skateboard legend Tony Hawk's old Fallbrook ramp ---- that should be moved to the new digs."We're not going to throw anything away just yet," Hostetter said. "Some day there may be a Transworld museum."Contact staff writer Craig TenBroeck at (760) 901-4062 or ctenbroeck@nctimes.com.[xcomponent:paragraphs:3]-->