Oprah Winfrey shutting down Harpo Studios in Chicago after 26 years

After nearly three decades, Oprah Winfrey is saying goodbye to the Windy City and will close her Chicago-based Harpo Studios by the end of the year.

Chicago has "been everything for me," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "I've spent more hours in this building than I have any other building on Earth.... We were here when there was nothing but hoes and rats on the street, and now it's one of the hottest neighborhoods [in Chicago]. The time has come to downsize this part of the business and to move forward. It will be sad to say goodbye, but I look ahead with such a knowing that what the future holds is even more than I can see."

Winfrey is transitioning the company's productions to OWN headquarters in Los Angeles, and she broke the news to the Chicago team in person on Tuesday. For the past five years, the media mogul has been going back and forth between Hollywood and Chicago, and she decided that the whole team had to be under one roof. About 200 employees are impacted by the closure; they will remain employed through December.

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