Burbank Mulls Lockheed Offer of 20.5 Acres for $20 Million

Lockheed-California Co. officials said they have offered to sell Burbank 20.5 acres that could be used for a conference center.

Lockheed wants about $20 million for the site behind the Burbank Airport Hilton, City Manager Bud Ovrom said. On the property is a 520,000-square-foot wooden building that Lockheed has used as a warehouse since World War II, Dick Hileman, Lockheed’s real estate director, said.

The property is surplus because some of the company’s work has been moved to Palmdale, and some operations have been consolidated, Hileman said.

Ovrom said the city had been trying to acquire the land for several years as the possible location of a convention or conference center. The offer came during the last two weeks, he said.

The city no longer wants a convention center “because there’s no way we could compete with Los Angeles, and there are a lot of convention centers that are white elephants,” Ovrom said.

But the city is still considering investing in a conference center with banquet facilities that could accommodate 1,000 people, Ovrom said.

The city also has been negotiating with the Burbank Airport Hilton, next to the property, regarding the addition of more than 200 rooms. That expansion could take place on the site Lockheed has offered the city, officials said.

However, nothing can be completed until the city conducts an appraisal and further studies “to see if this thing would pencil out for us,” Ovrom said. In addition, the Burbank City Council, the city’s redevelopment agency, must approve the sale, he said.

The property, in one of Burbank’s redevelopment districts, parallels Hollywood Way on the west behind the Airport Hilton. It is bounded by Thornton Avenue on the north, Empire Avenue on the south and Ontario Street on the east.

Officials said discussion regarding the site will not take place until after the holidays. “This is not something we want to rush into,” Ovrom said.

But Hileman said he did not want to wait too long for a decision from the city. “We aren’t going to waltz much about this after the first quarter of the year,” Hileman said. “If the city doesn’t want it, we would put in on the market and sell it on a different basis.”