Burbank Plans Media District Growth Curbs

After five years of study and debate, Burbank city officials Wednesday outlined a plan to control growth in the city’s Media District, fast emerging as one of the country’s largest centers of entertainment-oriented industries.

City and studio officials called the Media District Specific Plan one of the most restrictive in Southern California. But homeowners complained that it does not do enough to control the encroachment of commercial and industrial development into their neighborhoods--resurrecting the disagreements that have kept the plan tied up in hearings since the mid-1980s.

Home to the Disney, Warner Brothers and NBC studios, the Media District grew largely uncontrolled during the early 1980s, transforming an area often referred to sarcastically as “Beautiful Downtown Burbank.”

The district’s glass and steel high-rise office buildings each day attract about 20,000 people employed by the studios and other entertainment businesses that straddle the Ventura Freeway in southwest Burbank.

But the growth has been felt by residents of nearby neighborhoods. They say their quiet, tree-lined streets have become virtual freeways during rush hour and tall buildings have decimated the country-like atmosphere of upper-middle-class neighborhoods such as Toluca Lake and the Burbank Rancho.

“During the early 1980s, there was a tremendous influx of high-density, high-rise office buildings,” City Manager Robert (Bud) Ovrom said. “Quite frankly, not enough thought was given to the cumulative effects of all those buildings combined.”

If approved by the City Council later this fall, the Media District Specific Plan will become the blueprint for future development on the 557 acres in the southwest corner of Burbank. The plan imposes height limits, density restrictions and design standards on new construction and seeks to protect nearby residential neighborhoods from commercial and industrial intrusion. It encourages the use of alternate transportation and requires companies to cut back by 38% the auto traffic they generate over the next 20 years.

At the same time, however, the plan encourages enough growth to keep the Media District an attractive location for studios and other entertainment-oriented industries.

Faced with the departure of the Lockheed Corp. to Georgia, city officials have tried to make Burbank more attractive to business, a sore point with some homeowners.

Many residents interviewed Wednesday complained that the plan actually would increase traffic to gridlock levels and destroy the neighborhoods of single-family homes that surround the area. “It is really a placebo to make everyone feel good,” homeowner Robert Olson said.

City and studio officials acknowledged that the plan, hammered out during five years of hearings, is less than perfect.

“It’s the best plan we could hope for because no one is ecstatic about it,” said Jack O’Neill, vice president of real estate and facilities planning for NBC.

The plan seeks to unite the different elements of the district, which is bisected by the Ventura Freeway and lies roughly between Buena Vista Street and Clybourn Avenue.

Pedestrian traffic will be encouraged throughout the district with the construction of plazas. City planners especially want to maintain heavy pedestrian use of Riverside Drive.

The plan imposes a height limit of 205 feet on projects that get conditional use permits. Other buildings would be limited to 35 feet.

Studios also will be affected, but some officials said Wednesday that the plan’s publication will allow them to proceed with projects that have been put on hold. Alan Epstein, vice president of the Disney Development Co., said all Disney projects in Burbank have been delayed for the last five years as the company waited to find out what restrictions the plan would impose. O’Neill said NBC has delayed development of its 800,000 square-foot NBC Plaza project for at least a year.