END OF DAYS AT THE BURBANK SKI LODGE

Scores of Warner Bros. Records staffers past and present gathered on Saturday at the company’s headquarters since 1975 to say goodbye to the venerable building just off Riverside Drive in Burbank. Susan Leon and Kevin Laffey organized the bittersweet celebration, and WB Entertainment's Lisa Margolis took the exterior photos. Aaron Bay-Schuck, Tom Corson and their staff are preparing for their 3/18 move into the onetime Ford assembly plant in DTLA.

On hand were four guys who don’t really need name tags when they’re in the vicinity of 3300 Warner Blvd. Posing in this photo opp for old time's sake are Hale Milgrim, Jeff Ayeroff, Jim Wagner and Jeff Gold in the lobby of the art department. The photo was taken by fellow former Bunny Tim Devine, who made an interesting point in his Facebook post:

“The Warner Bros. ‘ski chalet’ is the only building I know of (besides the Capitol Tower) that was built specifically to hold its record label occupants. Many labels have had their own building (A&M on the Chaplin lot, the original Geffen on Sunset (the former Howard Hughes offices, of course!), though most were just in standard-issue office buildings here and in N.Y. 3300 Warner Blvd. was built to hold WBR and (again like Capitol) is its only occupant ever. Many people may not think of it this way, but that is rare.”

A bit of history from our own I.B. Bad: “Along with CBS and sister labels Elektra and Atlantic, Warners dominated the musical landscape of the ’70s and ’80s. We’d long viewed WB as a special place, and during the years we worked for the label—from 1978 to ’86—we got a close-up look at what made it unique and why the Burbank ski lodge was the place to be, a major with the heart of an indie. The in-house producers and the acts they produced for the A&R-driven label were at ground zero of this remarkably creative era. This impressive array of execs was brilliantly managed by Mo Ostin.”

Will the 89,452 sq. ft. building, designed by legendary SoCal architect A. Quincy Jones, receive historic-landmark status? The place would inarguably make one helluva music-biz museum.