It’s Colorful, It’s Burbank in Search of a New Image

‘We want to move to the top of the pile.’

Mark MacCarley

Burbank Chamber of Commerce

What do you call a city that is ridiculed regularly on television and has been the butt of jokes since the 1960s?

You could call it Burbank.

You could also call it a little fed up.

Comedian Johnny Carson and shows such as “Laugh-In” brought Burbank worldwide recognition with sarcastic references to “Beautiful Downtown Burbank,” but the city’s businessmen want to prove to the world that there is more to Burbank than yawns and more yawns.

The Burbank Chamber of Commerce called a news conference Wednesday to say it is intensifying its efforts to change the city’s image from that of a “sleepy, bedroom community” to a vibrant and expanding commercial center.

In an effort to compete with other cities to attract new businesses, the campaign will promote Burbank as an amiable and growing suburb with better schools and less congestion than other cities in the Los Angeles area.

Image Disputed

“I think we’re still looked upon by a lot of people as this small, fumbling town that lacks enthusiasm and identity,” said Mark MacCarley, a director of the chamber who is heading the campaign.

“But we think there’s enough here that we can compete with Los Angeles, Glendale and anyone else for businesses. We want to move to the top of the pile.”

He said he hopes to offset the perception of Burbank by outsiders as a “no-growth” city, an image he said was aggravated by the “attitudes of past administrations” and an unsuccessful building moratorium proposal in the City Council last year. In fact, he said, buildings with 2 million square feet of commercial space have been constructed in Burbank since 1981.

The constant jokes about Burbank do have a brighter side, MacCarley said. “If I go to New York to talk to a potential employer, he instantly knows what Burbank is,” he said.

With the concentration of movie and television studios, the town can be sold as “the entertainment capital of the world,” MacCarley said. The chamber is preparing a slick, multicolored book picturing Burbank and its benefits that is to be distributed to 10,000 businesses around the country in December.

Assets to Be Featured

The book, paid for by advertisements from Burbank merchants, will feature pictures of the studios, high schools, Burbank Airport, parks and the Starlight Amphitheatre, as well as biographies of Mayor Mary E. Kelsey and other city leaders.

The campaign slogan is ‘Doing Business in Burbank is Good Business.”

Former city Community Development Director Larry Kosmont, in his first public appearance as a consultant to the city since resigning in July, said the campaign “would be a shot in the arm in marketing Burbank to corporate America. Burbank is a strong market, and it cannot be thought of as a weak secondary marketplace to Los Angeles.”

Dan Baroda, an advertising executive who is a member of the chamber, is planning to market colorful T-shirts and hats showing a stylized sun over the Verdugo Mountains and palm trees with the words “Beautiful Downtown Burbank.”

He said that when he wore a sample T-shirt and hat on a recent vacation to Hawaii, “People kept coming up to me and asking where they could get them. I could have sold 60 of them. Everyone knows Burbank.”