How Burbank found a solution to downtown doom | Real Estate news

A Burbank landlord making an attempt to land a fashionable ice cream store tenant obtained a crucial help from town that helped seal the deal.

When a Van Leeuwen Ice Cream consultant got here to look at his space in the middle of downtown Burbank in April, a senior metropolis official was there to help woo the model, said Kurt Kaufman of West Coast Investors, which owns the property.

“She said, ‘Look, guys, we aren’t the city of L.A. We can make things happen,’” he recalled. “They were able to open in quite record speed.”

Van Leeuwen had anticipated to have to wait until next 12 months, but was ready to open its doorways in time for peak ice cream season, summer season, in half because of town’s help.

While downtown Los Angeles is languishing, Burbank is booming.

Its secret system, town says, is embracing companies, serving to the homeless and holding streets clean, to make downtown a go-to vacation spot for more customers, diners and commuters.

“You have to be vigilant with your maintenance, with your homeless outreach, with outreach to businesses, with your marketing and PR,” said Community Development Director Patrick Prescott. “It’s just constant vigilance.”

Much has modified since “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” was a operating joke on midcentury TV exhibits such as “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

It still has Bob’s Big Boy, the last restaurant of a once-large chain recognized for its chubby mascot, and Milt & Edie’s, a quirky pink-awninged 24-hour tailor and dry cleaner relationship to the Eighties.

Young metropolis staffers don’t bear in mind Carson or Bob Hope, whose title was taken off the local airport in 2017, but they’re serving to construct a new id for the unassuming but world-famous enclave, home to major studios Warner Bros. Discovery and Walt Disney.

The new title of the airport, Hollywood Burbank Airport, factors to the larger branding Burbank is aiming for. The airport is getting a new $1.3-billion terminal set to open in October.

The metropolis tries to keep its idiosyncratic companies going while prospecting for newcomers. It needs to populate downtown with enjoyable storefronts. It has a group working off of a grasp listing of desired tenants, boosting Burbank for consideration for common outlets, eating places and cafes. They signify town at big buying and real estate occasions to stir up curiosity.

“The city wanted an H&M years ago, and now we have an H&M. We wanted a Sephora, and now we have a Sephora,” said Mary Hamzoian, financial development supervisor.

It also satisfied Philz Coffee to come to city and now has the most important IKEA in the nation.

Downtown L.A.may benefit from Burbank’s method, said Nella McOsker, president of the Central City Assn. business assist group.

“Downtown L.A. should be a priority zone where the city could implement a white glove approach to helping retailers,” she said. “Progressive values and economic growth are not competing values”

Burbank has a population of about 100,000, which doubles during the workday. It is competing with Glendale, Pasadena and the Studio City neighborhoods of Los Angeles, so town also makes an effort to keep tenants from leaving by visiting them to see if they’re having any points.

cenes on San Fernando Blvd. late in the afternoon on Saturday.

(David Butow/For the Times)

Burbank is also making an attempt to construct more properties downtown. The metropolis intends to add 10,000 housing models downtown in the years forward, which can require streamlining the development approval course of to remove hurdles. First Street Village, a 275-unit house complicated constructed in 2023 that has ground-floor retail such as a wine bar, fitness middle and pet groomer, obtained help from town.

The metropolis’s 3-to-1 imbalance of jobs to housing is one of the most important in the nation and a lure for builders, said house developer Chris Tourtellotte. In tech-charged components of the Bay Area, the housing-to-jobs ratio is 2-to-1, and Los Angeles is nearer to 1-to-1.

“Burbank is severely underserved” with housing, Tourtellote said. His Marina del Rey company LaTerra Development lately accomplished a 575-unit complicated along the 5 Freeway close to the Burbank MetroLink station that caters to tenants in the leisure industry.

LaTerra also hopes to break ground this 12 months on an even bigger house and retail complicated close to the airport on a website that once held an unofficial Burbank landmark, the retro sci-fi and alien-themed Fry’s Electronics that included a giant flying saucer crashing into the building. The lot on Hollywood Way has been cleared for new development. Potential tenants LaTerra is concentrating on embrace pilots, flight attendants and other people who work at the airport.

Pedestrians stroll past a restaurant with misters on the pedestrian mall on Palm avenue in the downtown Burbank.

(David Butow/For the Times)

To be sure, not every resident is pleased about the development. Burbank locals have resisted growth in the past, said real estate guide Chris Baer of Avison Young.

“There was a lot of NIMBYism,” he said, but “there is a whole new thought process about it now. Both the state of California and the city really wanted to change that dynamic. There are so many jobs in the city but not enough places for people to live.”

More locals are keen to settle for development, as long as it doesn’t overwhelm the quaintness of town, house developer Tourtellote said.

“People are still trying to hold on to that old Burbank charm,” he said. “But at the same time they recognize there’s a need for housing.”

Entreprenuer J.C. Reifenberg describes Burbank as “nerdy in a good way,” but is opening his next bar in downtown Burbank in half for the parking.

“You kind of get the best a big city has to offer, but it’s on your doorstep, and there’s free parking everywhere,” he said.

Reifenberg operates a Star Wars-themed bar in Hollywood and says parking charges in a close by municipal lot and personal parking heaps routinely charge as a lot as $25.

Scenes on the pedestrian mall on Palm Avenue and San Fernando Blvd. in downtown Burbank.

(David Butow/For the Times)

“I’ve seen it impact my business,” he said. “People who come to our trivia nights say they may not be able to afford to come weekly anymore.”

Reifenberg has leased space for an extra department of his Scum & Villany bar and restaurant on Palm Avenue under the AMC Burbank 30, the busiest theater complicated in AMC’s chain. He’s paying 40% less rent than he’s in Hollywood for a bigger space.

Scum & Villany is “a comic book shop and sports bar for nerds,” he said, a theme he plans to develop on in Burbank with a group space for conferences because he seems like his people are close by.

Burbank has an unbiased video recreation store, a board recreation store, a classic toy store, a year-round Halloween store, the Horror Boodega comfort store and two comedian e-book shops, Reifenberg said. “What city on earth can support two comic book stores now?”