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App Company Wants To Rename Runyon Canyon Park
(This is what the news signs would look like. Photograph courtesy of Exley.)
It looks like there's more news coming out of Runyon Canyon Park this week: not only is there a new gate to deter hikers from a popular path, a media group wants to rename the park.
Enter Quint Media -- a publicly traded company from Miami -- and Tino Dietrich, the company's C.F.O. Dietrich put in an offer letter to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation last week to buy the naming rights for L.A.'s popular hiking spot, which would be renamed "Exley Canyon Park." The price tag? $80 million over the span of 30 years.
(Tino Dietrich stopped by Runyon last month before sending an offer letter. Photo courtesy of Exley.)
We'd never heard about the company until today, but it turns out Dietrich and Quint Media plan on launching a new celeb-tracking app called Exley on Monday. The app basically relies on crowdsourced information on celebrities to track where they might be at any given moment, so users can find them (creepy).The potential purchase is a preemptive move to not only put Exley on the map, so to speak, but to make it known in a place where people often do some celebrity-watching of their own. While it sounds like a PR move, Spokesman Zack Teperman insists putting in an empty offer would be bad for business. Runyon, he added, was Dietrich's choice.
"When people come to L.A. and Hollywood, where do they go and spot celebs? At Runyon, you see Ryan Gosling, you see Johnny Knoxville. It's the perfect tie in," Teperman said.
The makers of the app want to do the same thing in New York with Times Square, something Dietrich says would provide a "unique boost for their tourism departments and help the American economy immensely."
Teperman said discussions to rename the park are on-going. The Department of Recreation and Parks, as well as local city councilman Tom LaBonge, have yet to comment.
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