WAL-MART : Wal-Mart No Longer Plans to Develop Burbank Site : Retailing: The company had offered to buy an 89-acre parcel vacated by Lockheed but will lease space instead.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has dropped a plan to develop 89 acres in Burbank vacated by Lockheed Corp. and has limited its consideration of moving to the city to leasing space from another developer.

According to Burbank officials, Wal-Mart offered $71 million to buy the land, but very quietly backed out of the plan a few months ago. The center was to have been anchored by a 110,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store and include a Sam’s Club office supply outlet that is also owned by Wal-Mart.

City officials said Wal-Mart told them it preferred to allow someone else to develop the shopping center but that it would still consider renting space in it.

“Now Wal-Mart is waiting until Lockheed picks a developer for the site and then they will enter negotiations with that developer,” said Robert Tague, Burbank’s community development director.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart declined to comment on why the company decided not to build the shopping center itself, but said that “we are still interested in the city of Burbank.”

Such a store would be the first real test for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart in the highly competitive metropolitan Los Angeles marketplace. One of Kmart Corp.’s largest stores is in nearby Glendale. Dayton Hudson has several Target stores in the San Fernando Valley.

The retail giant first moved into California in 1990 with a store in Lancaster and has since opened a store in Palmdale. It is planning to open other Los Angeles area stores this year and in Paramount and Cerritos next year.

Lockheed is eager to sell the Burbank property, a manufacturing site it vacated in late 1991. The aerospace company has received proposals from two shopping center developers so far, but hopes to get a few more bids before picking one.

“We want to have a short list of developers for the site by the end of July so we can start coming to some decisions,” a Lockheed spokesman said.

Vestar Development Co. of Phoenix, which is building the Wal-Mart-anchored centers in Paramount and Cerritos, said it submitted a plan to Lockheed about six months ago for a $100-million, 900,00-square-foot shopping center on 103 acres of the Burbank site.

Vestar said it will seek a major discount retailer to anchor the center, but not necessarily Wal-Mart.

“We’ve had calls from a lot of potential tenants, Wal-Mart being one,” Vestar senior vice president Rick Kuhle said. The company has built seven shopping centers anchored by Wal-Marts. It has also developed an equal number of centers anchored by Target stores and three centers where Kmart is a major tenant.