When NBC announced plans this fall to leave behind its facilities in “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” for a sparkling new development straddling Lankershim Boulevard at the 101 Freeway, the plan was heralded by politicians and business groups. The promise of jobs and tax revenue were lure enough to bring accolades, notwithstanding the civic advantage that comes with a high-profile development destined to be the home for NBC programming. The development on the west side of Lankershim, in Studio City on the Metropolitan Transit Authority land, is designed to be a two-phased plan. Phase one is to include: a 24-story office building of approximately 624,000 square feet for use by NBC Universal; a five-story/300,000 square foot building proposed as production and broadcast facilities for entertainment and news programs; a ground floor building that would include retail and restaurant businesses; and a structure to replace Metro parking, a transit plaza and bus parking. The second phase will include a second 24-story building. Thomas Properties Group is the developer for the plan and has dubbed the project Metro Studio @ Lankershim. The development planned for the east side of Lankershim, on the Universal Studios property in Universal City, will ostensibly include a 34-story building for offices or condo units that could number as many as 3,000. All aspects of the project could be completed by 2011. When he announced the project, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said, with the tax revenues and 3,200 jobs, it could be a $3 billion boon to the city by the time it’s complete. The mayor’s office was involved in the original negotiations with NBC and Thomas Properties Group. However, as the neighborhood groups gather to look closely at the project, opposition has begun to mount. Studio City Chamber of Commerce has withdrawn its support for the project and L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and City Councilmember Tom LaBonge have voiced their desire to see the project scaled back. At a recent Studio City Residents Association meeting, LaBonge said “There is going to be some development there, but I’m not in support of the project as proposed.” At that Nov. 13 meeting, the councilman spoke to the major concern voiced by many of the approximately 70 attendees. “What upsets people is the load of through traffic,” LaBonge said. He noted that the location has geographic conditions two hillsides, the L.A. River, the freeway that force commuters to funnel through the Cahuenga Pass and Barham corridor to get into and out of Hollywood and the L.A. Basin beyond. However, in supporters’ view, fear and loathing for the project is premature. Ayalushim Hammond, senior vice president of Thomas Properties group, said that draft EIR for the project on the MTA site should be complete early next year. She acknowledged that traffic is the major concern. “We’re very, very, very sensitive to that issue,” she said, and that “The draft EIR will identify where the hotspots are.” Consequently, said Hammond, that will help Thomas Properties to improve traffic conditions. Among the traffic mitigations being considered is a freeway ramp that feeds directly onto the project site, keeping many cars off of Lankershim, Hammond said. “Definitely, that’s the number one issue on people’s minds,” she said. Besides traffic, a number of concerns are finding voice and addressed by a coalition of interested groups from the area. Representatives from surrounding chambers, neighborhood councils and residents’ associations are working with the developer under the umbrella name of the Universal/MTA Project Community Working Group. Also among the Working Group is a representative of the Campo de Caheunga Historical Memorial Association. Campo de Cahuenga is the site where the treaty ending the Mexican-American War was signed in 1847. The site sits in the MTA parking lot. It is a registered landmark with the state of California and a historical monument of the city of Los Angeles. Those designations overlap into the other jurisdictions of the overall project. “It’s a unique site: part city, part county,” LaBonge said. Further, the Working Group constituencies have jurisdictions and concerns of its own. Orrin Feldman is a Working Group representative as vice president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council. Feldman said the project raises a lot of private/public issues considering the public transit asset that will be enveloped by the development. “Are we going to add parking to get more use out of that public asset or just build an office building on top of a transit station?,” Feldman said. Valley Industry and Commerce Association president Brendan Huffman said that his organization maintains its support, saying some development is inevitable on the site. Without the NBC project going there, he imagines housing to be the most likely, thereby adding further traffic to the street yet without the major traffic mitigation that the proposed development will have. If NBC stays in and expands in Burbank, he said, the traffic will still pass through the affected neighborhoods but without the projects’ resultant tax revenue and jobs.
