CBS Plans to Expand Facilities : Television: Network says the 245,000-square-foot project will help meet the growing demand for studio space.

With the support of local homeowners, CBS is hoping to expand the studio compound that gave this community its name, adding seven sound stages on an 11.5-acre site just north of the network’s current lots.

The television network will bring the 245,000-square-foot project before a Los Angeles zoning administrator July 8, seeking permission to build on the residentially zoned land and to exceed current height limits on Radford Avenue. The land, already owned by CBS, is now partially used for parking.

Edward Grebow, CBS’s executive vice president of operations and administration, said that with cable and other outlets needing more programming, the business of providing space to create those programs is growing.

As it is, Grebow said, the 16 sound stages at CBS Studio Center are full. “Seinfeld,” “Roseanne,” and “Dave’s World,” are among the shows produced on the site.

“There is a shortage of first-class studio space . . . and television production in general is increasing in L.A.,” Grebow said. “We’re in the business of providing studio facilities for our own productions and for other studios and producers. It’s a good business for us.”

Currently, about two-thirds of the shows produced at Studio Center are non-CBS shows for other networks, Grebow said. CBS has outlined a project that includes the additional sound stages, dressings rooms, storage areas, production support areas and 1,202 parking spaces. It also proposes building a bridge over the Los Angeles River to connect the new and old lots. In all, say CBS officials, the new lots will create about 800 jobs.

If granted the conditional use permit in July, the network plans to build the first two sound stages before the fall of 1995, according to Gary Morris, a planner with Engineering Technology Inc., the company overseeing the early stages of the project.

Both Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the area, and the Studio City Residents’ Assn. praised CBS for consulting the community as the project evolved.

“The message in this is that people can work together, there are common concerns,” Wachs said. “It isn’t just homeowners versus the businesses. Everyone has a stake in this.”

Tony Lucente, the residents’ association president, said the network first approached neighbors at their annual meeting in March, and then met with them two times in April to go over the plans and solicit concerns.

Lucente said there were some questions about traffic congestion and seismic safety, but that the network was responsive to the neighbors’ apprehensions.

“Our reaction was favorable,” Lucente said. “A large percentage of our membership works in the entertainment industry or are associated with the business. This is how we got our name; this is our culture.”

The lot was first christened by Mack Sennett in 1928, when he built the studios that bore his name near the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura boulevards. Republic studios bought the lots in 1930 and then sold them to Columbia Broadcasting Systems in 1967.

According to local lore, the move to name the area Studio City came not from studio executives, but from nearby farmers eager to share in the movie glamour.

John S. Reidy, a media analyst with Smith Barney Shearson in New York, said the television industry in general is poised to pick up a bigger piece of the production pie.

Prior to November, 1993, networks were working under tight restrictions about what they could produce, and were barred from reselling their own entertainment shows. With the growth of cable and other outlets the regulations were relaxed, and experts predict the studios will benefit from the resulting boom in demand for studio space.

“Clearly CBS would like to not just produce shows for CBS, but for the other networks, for cable and the international market place,” Reidy said. “They’re now allowed to be programmers, so they’re trying to build up their programming capacity.

“This is the physical manifestation, along with the changes in programming production, of the idea that the TV networks are going to become ever more important factors in the production in short form film entertainment.”

In addition to planning the site, ETI is also helping negotiate the plans through the city bureaucracy. Reports from the city ethics commission detail that CBS paid Alan Shuman, ETI’s chief operating officer and a lobbyist, close to $130,000 in 1993 and 1994--the largest fee paid to an individual lobbyist in more than a year, ethics commission analyst Dominic Alfaro said.

Shuman downplayed the fees, saying that if he earned more than any other lobbyist, it is testimony that there have not been other large projects proposed in the Los Angeles area.