NBC Drops $200-Million Plaza Project : Burbank: The weak economy strikes a blow to plans to expand Media District. The 4.4-acre site has been sold to a company in New York.

Citing poor economic conditions and tight credit, NBC and a development company have abandoned plans to build a $200-million office complex in Burbank’s Media District.

The failure to develop the proposed NBC Plaza strikes a blow to the city’s plans to add entertainment-related development in the Media District. NBC Plaza was approved in March, 1991, and was to have included 18- and 15-story office towers on a 4.4-acre lot adjacent to the network’s studios.

“It’s a shame that it’s a victim of hard times. I’m sorry to see this happen,” said Burbank City Manager Robert Ovrom, who plans to brief the City Council on the stalled project tonight.

In a joint statement, NBC and Cushman Investment and Development Corp. announced last week that they could not find adequate financing for the project.

“The economic aspects of new office development are simply no longer attractive for the necessary commitment of time and capital either for Cushman or NBC,” the companies’ statement said.

Under the original plan, NBC employees would have occupied 100,000 square feet of office space while about 600,000 square feet would have been leased out.

The site, now mainly used for parking, has been sold for an undisclosed price to a newly formed New York company called Burbank Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of Bank of New York, Ovrom said.

A spokesman for Burbank Holdings did not return phone calls. The company sent Ovrom a letter indicating it may develop the site at an unspecified future date after the office market improved.

“Burbank Holdings has expressed a desire to meet with us and see if there are permits that are going to expire,” Ovrom said. “They want to perpetuate the life of the project as far as city approval is concerned.”

NBC no longer has any involvement in the site, said Jack O’Neill, the NBC vice president in charge of the NBC Plaza project. But the company may be interested in renting office space there someday, he added.

“The fact that Cushman and NBC have decided to no longer spend any time on it is in no way a reflection on the site. It’s a prime site,” O’Neill said. “I would recommend that any developer who wants to get something in the ground come and talk to NBC first.”

Ovrom said any office project there would probably be more marketable if it had an affiliation with NBC, even if the building had the entertainment company’s name “or the peacock logo on the front.”

“I still believe it’s a good project and a good location, and it will get done,” Ovrom said.

NBC Plaza is the second major office project in Burbank to stall recently for lack of funding. Last summer, investors pulled out of a $60-million office project adjacent to the Media City Center Mall in downtown Burbank.

At the time of NBC Plaza’s approval, city officials said it would be the focal point of the Media District, with extensive landscaping, fountains and terraced pavilions.

The project’s two high-rises were to be connected by a two-story atrium containing stores and restaurants. The site is a triangle of land bounded by Olive Avenue on the northwest, California Street on the northeast and the Ventura Freeway on the south. It sits across California Street from NBC’s 44-acre studio complex.

The project was the first major development approved after the council adopted the Media District Specific Plan, a comprehensive growth agenda for a southwestern Burbank area dominated by movie and television studios.

Burbank, which has lost about 15,000 jobs in the past two years because of the decline of the aerospace industry, has looked increasingly to entertainment companies to rebuild its employment base. In 1992, the city approved a 20-year expansion plan by Walt Disney Studios and a smaller office project by Warner Bros.