Council Sides With Media District Residents : Burbank Parking Lot Plan Denied

After two hours of emotional pleas by more than three dozen Burbank residents, the Burbank City Council voted unanimously to block the demolition of a home that Dick Clark Television Productions wanted to replace with a parking lot.

The residents, dressed in red and wearing Save Our Street badges, paraded one by one before the City Council on Tuesday night to complain that the proposed 30-space parking lot on Niagara Street would bring crime, drunks, traffic and noise to their neighborhood, which adjoins the city’s blossoming Media District on Olive and Alameda avenues.

“We’ve lived on that street for years and we love that street,” Cheryl Bomar told the City Council as she broke into tears. “It is an emotional thing for me.”

Permit Requested

Andrew McIntyre, head of AME Inc. and owner of the home, had requested a conditional-use permit from the city to convert the property into a parking lot. McIntyre intended to sell the land to Dick Clark Television Productions, one of many businesses on Olive Avenue in desperate need of additional parking, city officials said.

Assistant City Manager George Nony said the city has established preferential parking zones in neighborhoods along the Media District because of complaints by residents that employees from studios and other businesses park on residential streets. Those zones, however, have pushed the parking problem to other streets, he said.

Richard Leonard, a representative from the Clark company, said the firm has been trying to work with residents to find a solution to the parking problem.

Company Proposals

He said the company would restrict parking to daytime hours, lock the lot at night and landscape the area.

City Council members and some residents acknowledged that parking has become a major problem in the area, but several of them described the 30-space parking lot as a short-term solution to just one aspect of the problem.

The City Planning Board approved AME’s request for a conditional permit last month, a move that was supported by the city’s planning staff but appealed to the City Council by the Niagara Street residents.