Burbank Police Department (California) - Shopping

Shopping

The revitalized downtown Burbank provides an urban mix of shopping, dining, and entertainment. The San Fernando Strip is an exclusive mall designed to be a modern urban village, with apartments above the mall. An upscale shopping district is located in the state-of-the-art Empire Center neighborhood. The Burbank Town Center is a retail complex adjacent to the downtown core that was built in two phases between 1991 and 1992.

In 1979, the Burbank Redevelopment Agency entered into an agreement with San Diego-based Ernest Hahn Company to build a regional mall known as Media City Center. It would later get renamed Burbank Town Center and undergo a $130 million facelift starting in 2004, including a new exterior streetscape facade. The agency, helped out with its powers of eminent domain, spent $52 million to buy up the 41-acre (170,000 m2) land in the area bounded by the Golden State Freeway, Burbank Boulevard, Third Street and Magnolia Boulevard.

Original plans were for Media City Center included four anchor tenants, including a J.W. Robinson's. But May Co. Department Stores later bought the parent company of Robinson's and dropped out of the deal. The other stores then dropped out as well and Hahn and the agency dropped the project in March 1987. Within months, Burbank entered into negotiations with the Walt Disney Company for a shopping mall and office complex to be called the "Disney MGM Backlot." Disney had estimated that it could spend $150 million to $300 million on a complex of shops, restaurants, theaters, clubs and hotel, and had offered to move its animation department and Disney Channel cable network operation to the property as well. These plans ended in failure in February 1988 when Disney executives determined that the costs were too high.

In January 1989, Burbank began Media City Center project negotiations with two developers, the Alexander Haagen Co. of Manhattan Beach and Price Kornwasser Associates of San Diego. Eight months later, Haagen won the contract and commenced construction, leading to the $250 million mall's opening in August 1991. Under terms of the agreement with Haagen, the city funded a $18 million parking garage and made between $8 and $12 million in improvements to the surrounding area. Plans by Sheraton Corporation to build a 300-room hotel at the mall were shelved because of the weak economy.

The new mall helped take the strain off Burbank's troubled economy, which had been hard hit by the departure of several large industrial employers, including Lockheed Corp. The center was partially financed with $50 million in city redevelopment funds. Construction had been in doubt for many years by economic woes and political turmoil since it was first proposed in the late 1970s. In 2003, Irvine-based Crown Realty & Development purchased the 1,200,000-square-foot (110,000 m2) Burbank Town Center from Pan Pacific Retail Properties for $111 million. Crown then hired General Growth Properties Inc., a Chicago-based real estate investment trust, for property management and leasing duties. At the time, the Burbank mall ranked as the No. 6 retail center in Los Angeles County in terms of leasable square footage, with estimated combined tenant volumes in excess of $240 million. One local standout was the Burbank Town Center's IKEA, with an estimated 30,000 shoppers weekly and rated No. 1 in Southern California with annual sales of $90 million.

In 1994, Lockheed selected Chicago-based Homart Development Company as the developer of a retail center on a former P-38 "Skunk Works" plant near the Burbank Airport that was subject to a major toxic clean-up project. A year later, Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta to become Lockheed Martin Corp.. Lockheed was ordered to clean up the toxics as part of a federal Superfund site. The northern Burbank area also became identified as the San Fernando Valley's hottest toxic spot in 1989 by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, with Lockheed identified among major contributors. Lockheed always maintained the site was never a health risk to the community.

The Lockheed toxic clean-up site, just east of the Golden State Freeway, later became home to the Empire Center. Four developers competed to be selected to build the $300 million outdoor mall on the site. In 1999, Lockheed picked Los Angeles-based Zelman Cos. from among other contenders to create the retail-office complex on a 103-acre (0.42 km2) site. Zelman purchased the land in 2000 for around $70 million. As part of the sales agreement, Lockheed carried out extensive soil vapor removal on the site. Lockheed had manufactured planes on the site from 1928 to 1991. Together with $42 million for demolition and $12 million for site investigation, Lockheed would eventually spend $115 million on the project.

Warner Brothers proposed building a sports arena there for the Kings and the Clippers on the former B-1 bomber plant site. Price Club wanted it for a new store. Disney considered moving some operations there too. The city used the site in its failed attempt to lure DreamWorks to Burbank. Phoenix-based Vestar Development Company planned a major retail development and spent more than a year in negotiations to buy the property from Lockheed before pulling out late in 1998.

Less than eight months after breaking ground, the Empire Center's first stores opened in October 2001. Local officials estimated the complex would generate about $3.2 million a year in sales tax revenue for the city, and as many as 3,500 local jobs. Within a year of completion, the Empire Center was helping the city to post healthy growth in sales tax revenues despite a down economy. Alone, the Empire mall generated close to $800,000 in sales tax revenues in the second quarter of 2002. The outdoor mall's buildings hark back to Lockheed's glory days by resembling manufacturing plants. Each of the outdoor signs features a replica of a Lockheed aircraft, while the mall design brings to mind an airport, complete with a miniature control tower.

In 2009, work was finished on a $130-million office project adjacent to the Empire Center. The completion of the seven-story tower marked the final phase of the mixed-use Empire development near Bob Hope Airport.

In late 2012, IKEA announced plans to relocate to a new site in Burbank. The retailer is currently situated north of the Burbank Town Center mall, and the proposed location would be just north of Alameda Avenue and east of the Golden State Freeway. City approval is still pending.