We’ve been wondering why Warners execs and PR people have been on the phone with Mike Flad all this last year. They’ve been pulling strings like Howdy Doody had no tomorrow:
Planning commissioners this week recommended that the city extend major development agreements with Warner Bros. by another 15 years, giving the studio more time to grow.
The development agreements with the city were approved in 1995 and allowed for 20 years of planned development within the studio’s 106-acre Main Lot at West Olive Avenue and Warner Boulevard and 30-acre Ranch Lot at North Hollywood Way and West Oak Street.
While there are no major building plans within the coming five years, Warner Bros. Vice President of Public Affairs Michael Walbrecht told the Planning Board on Monday that the studio wanted to extend the agreements for an additional 15 years to continue work within the lots until 2030 while maintaining the current Planned Development zoning designation.
Wow. 35 years. We know grandmothers that age.
Is this really a wise idea, what with all the cataclysmic changes that will be coming to these soon-to-be-godforsaken Burbank neighborhoods because of the Universal expansion project?
Is it good to hamstring a way-in-the-future city council with these age-old planning decisions from the past?
Maybe that’s the idea….
In any sensible world this news about Warner Bros. would completely bollox Emily Gabel-Luddy’s campaign. She’s their gal.
Burbank, California 
That’s why you should vote for Bob
http://www.facebook.com/v/1928341406736
Semi this embed thing does not work you can get it at the link and upload the spot direct if you want to write a column for this.
The links will work, but not the embeds.
The City of Burbank used legal means to force WordPress to pull my ability to embed YouTube videos. Rather than get into a full fledged legal battle to determine if Burbank owns restrictive “copyrights” on city council videos (which they don’t), they complied.
Or you could just piss them off and they can up and leave like NBC.
Yea that’s what happened, dope.
FYI, NBC owned and operated their “Color Television Studios” ever since the 1950’s.
They freely have entered into real estate agreements that would and will greatly increase the “footprint” of those properties.
Their internal arangements with Universal, et al. are NOT influenced by Burbank politics any more than the County Board of Supes or the L.A. City Council.
Are you aware that there is an advantage to Burbank when Studio Property changes hands.
The holdings are reappraised and Reassessed!!!
Stop crying.
I got a flyer from Gabel-Luddy a while back that says she is endorsed by Warner Brothers Sudios. Did she vote to do this extension or did she leave because of the conflict that this studio actually endorsed her ?
She recused herself because of the campaign donations.
I would think– if we had a real election campaign in this town, with newspaper coverage even– that this would be a BIG campaign issue this year.
Interesting that staff didn’t put this on the Planning Board’s agenda until well after the ballots went out and the votes started coming in. Or that Warners dragged their feet on it– coincidentally.
Staff faced a conundrum– if they agendized it earlier, it could have become a campaign issue before the primary. But if they wait too long, the old council will not be asked to rule on the final decision.
Think they’ll rush this final decision out before any new people are installed– like Frutos maybe?
My prediction is that if Frutos wins, staff will rush this item to the old council for approval.
Who’s going to stop them? One vote?
[UPDATE: under current law, Emily Gabel-Luddy will NOT be able to vote on this Warner Bros. issue if she’s elected– at least not right away. So watch staff use this as an excuse to run to the present council with it, in order to get approval.]
That happened last night Dave called out Fladd for not getting agendas out on time. He stammered and sputtered about some BS about the Redevelopment crises that took till last minute. It was only word of mouth from the seniors that got such a great turn out. I’m thinking this is a planned tactic getting agendas out late to keep the public from catching on to the hi-jinks they’re pulling as of late.
If the issue with that newspaper is a failure to give them the information they should take the city to task and eat them up in editorials, since they don’t do that, I believe it doesn’t matter because the Leader has no plans of covering any news, period. What, their reporers cover news ? That would mean work!
I no longer even use that paper in the bottom of my parakeet cage – it upsets my bird to have it in his cage!
Today’s edition of the follower is one of the most pathetic they’ve ever issued.
Less than TWO pages of “news” including pictures!!
The Election doesn’t exist, the “Tax Grab” doesn’t exist, and the ‘Police Mess” never happened and Senior Citizen’s didn’t pack the Council Chambers to overflowing!!!
They haven’t even covered the “Open Feud” with Bric & Golonski.
Flad and the barlow have things “under control”.Golonski’s happy(sic).
I’m sure you saw the “reporter” sitting in the back row with her laptop plugged in last night writing in her diary. She looked like a Community Collage journalism major I don’t even know if she was old enough to drink. Maybe it’s an intern program where the Follower gets reporters for free, because from what I read they must be getting it for free- you get what you pay for. I even looked over to her when Dave was throwing the Follower under the bus, I don’t think she looked up or even noted what was being said about her paper or her reporting. I don’t even know why she was there, no stories from last night at all in the paper, she could of watched the web feed at home in her jammies.
It seems to me I read something that even agreements longer than 10-years are not highly thought of by courts because you can’t predict all the negative impacts. I doubt seriously that getting a 35-year deal is worth the paper it is written on but some body would have to sue to challenge this kind of attempt to circumvent reasonable laws. Warner Bros should have to provide a new environmental analysis that would include the impacts of the new NBC-Universal mess on the hill as well as all the other impacts of the new airport deals and all the related traffic. They probably just want to make sure they keep the land entitlements as long as possible so they can start selling off pieces to make some big bucks the same as NBC.
Get out the rubber stamps because they will surely get whatever they want legal or not. Even LA would require new environmental impacts on this kind of a deal, but in LA there are people who would sue.
Here we go with cumulative impacts, again.
Johnson just throws-up his hands and babbles when you press on this one, and he’s NOT Italian.
Of course you’re right, the Universal Mess wasn’t even on the radar back then.
The various iterations of Barham Bridge Improvements have been, just NOT implemented
How does the Planning Board continue to let the Staff make “findings” for them?.