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Shopping Centers Today -> February 2004
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BURBANK’S MEDIA CITY TO GET $30 MILLION REHAB
BY IAN RITTER
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Irvine, Calif.-based Crown Realty will redo the three-story building’s exterior and place restaurants on both sides of the main entrance.
“We’re replanning it so it can be elevated to one of the region’s class-A retail destinations,” said Jim O’Neil, Crown Realty’s director of the development. The center’s nearest competitor is the upscale Glendale (Calif.) Galleria, about five miles away, against which the company wants Media City Center to stand up better (and against others of like caliber).
Crown Realty will keep the upper two levels devoted to Gap, Hot Topic, Victoria’s Secret and the other traditional in-line tenants there now. The enclosed mall’s anchors — Macy’s, Mervyn’s, Sears and Sport Chalet — are staying too, as is the AMC theater on the third level. Outparcel anchors include Barnes & Noble and Ikea.
In 2001 Center Trust, Media City Center’s owner before Crown Realty, planned to spend $25 million to remake the mall and rename it Burbank Center. Those plans were set aside when Pan Pacific Retail Properties, a Vista, Calif.-based owner of community and neighborhood centers, bought Center Trust in January 2003, selling it to Crown Realty two months later for $111 million.
P.F. Chang’s China Bistro has signed a lease for one of the entrance sites, and Crown Realty is seeking an Italian restaurant for the other, says O’Neil.
Though Crown Realty has never done such a large renovation, it has experience building smaller centers on nontraditional sites. It built Venice Crossroads, a 157,000-square-foot community center on the site of a former pasta factory in Los Angeles, and Burbank (Calif.) Gateway, a 75,000-square-foot community center where a ministorage facility once stood. Crown Realty, which is headed by Chairman Jaime Sohacheski and CEO Robert Flaxman, has since sold both of those; Media City is its only remaining retail property, though the company owns about 1.8 million square feet of office space throughout Southern California.
The time is right for the project, given the changes taking place in Burbank on the whole, Crown Realty says. NBC, The Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. have offices in the city, which is at work redeveloping the downtown area.
This is no ordinary renovation, says Mark McGaughey, first vice president of retail services at the Burbank office of CB Richard Ellis. “Most redevelopments, in my view, are putting Band-Aids on something that needs major surgery,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the case with Media City Center.”
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