Already home to millions of square feet of studio space for some 1,200 entertainment and media firms like Warner Bros., The Walt Disney Co. and Netflix, Burbank, California, is pushing to diversify its land use and construct more affordable housing.

Burbank has been marketing itself aggressively post-COVID and is starting to see results. Among other projects, 1,100 hotel rooms are in the works, a 1 million-square-foot industrial/office project was recently completed, dozens of retailers are seeking spaces and as many as 9,000 living units are planned for a variety of mixed-use developments by 2035, said Burbank economic development manager Mary Hamzoian.

Business-Friendly Efforts

Burbank has been tweaking master plans and zoning restrictions to grease the development wheels for potential tenants eyeing vacant and underutilized properties. “These measures are real game changers for us because they give us tools to broaden our density and increase the speed of projects going through the pipeline,” said Hamzoian. “For a long time, we had a very conservative city council, but it has been completely changed out to a much more development-friendly one today.”

Consultant Stratiscope gathered input from the community and businesses, and a big suggestion was to speed up the city’s permitting process. Toward that end, Burbank has created a business concierge desk to aid small and midsize firms in site selection, entitlements and zoning hurdles, said Hamzoian. “We were resolved to see where the delays and hiccups were and then make the changes needed to move forward. Small businesses in particular can be intimidated by the permitting process, so the objective was to help them get up and operating as soon as possible.” Dia de los Muertos-themed Mexican restaurant Kalaveras opened in May, and owner Isaias Campos credited the business concierge desk as pivotal.

Burbank and its representatives have been setting up at ICSC events and advertising in publications that target decisionmakers. Its meetings at ICSC LAS VEGAS “were robust,” said Kennedy Wilson Brokerage senior vice president Christine Deschaine, who represents multiple Burbank properties.

Projects in the Works

Among new projects are LaTerra Select Burbank, which will include 573 downtown housing units and a 307-room hotel, each feeding into a 30,000-square-foot transit plaza linked to a Metrolink station. The redevelopment, headed by LaTerra Development, will feature pool decks, fitness areas, shops, restaurants, co-working spaces, media rooms, solar power integration and a pedestrian connection to Magnolia Boulevard and downtown attractions. “What we’re building is designed ideally for the creative workforce that drives the city’s entertainment sector,” said LaTerra Development managing director Chris Tourtellotte. The first LaTerra businesses are slated to open in 2025.

Also downtown, the 3.4-acre First Street Village, anchored by a 275-unit apartment community, is underway. The three-building complex includes 19,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.

And at 550 N. Third St., a 196-room, six-story AC Hotel by Marriott with a 3,800-square-foot ground-level restaurant is in early development stages.

The 150-room Cambria Burbank Airport debuted in April, ready to accommodate travel growth from the 2026 opening of a 14-gate passenger terminal at the airport.

In a town that employs an eye-popping 65,000 media workers, more studio spaces and soundstages also are afoot. In July, Worthe, QuadReal and Stockbridge purchased from Warner Bros the 27-acre Burbank Studios, formerly known as NBC Studios, which once hosted Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show. As part of the deal, Warner Bros. will remain as a tenant and build 16 more soundstages on the Ranch Lot.

In another ongoing project, the 1 million-square-foot Avion Burbank will encompass six light-industrial buildings and nine two-story office-condo buildings for media production and e-commerce. The redevelopment, on a site near Hollywood Burbank Airport that once served as a Lockheed Martin airplane plant, including during World War II, also will include 15,500 square feet of retail and a 150-room hotel. It will rise in Burbank’s 640-acre Golden State District technology and media industry hub.

Demand Drivers and the Businesses to Serve Them

The city launched a Future of Work Accelerator program in 2021 to lure developers of incubators, accelerators and other technology innovation centers to town, Hamzoian said. The city is fully wired by community owned power and water utility One Burbank, with a high-speed type 3 fiber-optic network to serve the city’s numerous tech businesses, she added. Burbank’s combined occupancy rate for Class A and B office properties is 78.4 %, according to the city, which does not have retail occupancy numbers available.

Meanwhile, health care is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, producing physician offices, urgent-care facilities and other medical businesses, Hamzoian said.

Placer.ai projects that he city’s visitor count will increase from 3.8 million people in 2019 to 4.1 million for 2024. Visitors come for Warner Bros. and Disney studio tours, for several picturesque parks with mountain views and for a downtown that has been redeveloped since Carson wryly dubbed it “beautiful downtown Burbank.” In August, Burbank was picked as Best Friendly City or Downtown in in the Los Angeles Daily News’ 2024 Reader’s Choice awards. Mayor Nick Schultz credited the Downtown Burbank Property Based Business Improvement District, noting that it has raised more than $18 million in private funds since its 2003 founding.

“Burbank has such a unique story to tell, and the city has made it much easier to generate tenant interest,” said Deschaine. When a couple of downtown Burbank retail vacancies came open this fall, “we had back-to-back-to-back property tours at both,” she said.

The pedestrian-friendly downtown has grown to 600 shops, trendy restaurants and other businesses over the years, including North America’s largest Ikea store, at 456,000 square feet, and the 100-plus tenants of the Burbank Town Center, according to Hamzoian. Downtown retailers include H&M, Macy’s, Urban Outfitters, Burlington and one of the world’s highest-revenue-generating AMC cinemas. Its restaurants include Artelice Patisserie, Silverlake Ramen, Cafe Grano and Urban Press winery and restaurant. Coffee houses, a comedy club, fitness clubs and fast-casual favorites like Shake Shack also populate downtown.

Burbank will continue to seek trendy eateries and popular retailers to keep visitors to and locals in the town of 105,000 from gravitating to other Southern California cities, including downtown Los Angeles, which is just a dozen miles away, said Hamzoian. “And we will, of course, be looking for more residential to address our housing shortage.” With 165,000 total jobs in Burbank and only 43,000 households — about 3.5 jobs per dwelling — affordable housing is a huge want, particularly with a lofty median home value of $1.28 million.

Hamzoian noted: “While we’d love to get another large entertainment or production company — and we’re doing everything possible to keep studios here and happy — we really need to diversify.”