Less than 10 miles north of the Cornfield, Walt Disney Co. has proposed a large "creative campus" on the grounds of the former Grand Central Air Terminal, a Glendale airport that closed in 1959. Disney's plans are sketchy, but the entertainment giant has revealed plans for four district projects on the site: a 52-acre campus to house the theme park research and development operations; a 24-acre soundstage and production facility; a 27-acre media and technology campus that would have space available for lease; and another 18 acres of development to meet company or market needs.
Disney was one of the earliest tenants of the Grand Central Industrial Park, which replaced the airport shortly after it closed. About 3,000 Disney research and development employees work on the site. Disney purchased the property in 1997.
The site is within Glendale's 750-acre San Fernando Corridor Redevelopment Project Area, which has not seen a great deal of activity since the city created it in 1992, said Philip Lanzafame, assistant director of development services.
The project is in the environmental review process, and documents are scheduled to be released this spring. City officials also are negotiating financing packages with Disney, although Lanzafame said he could not disclose the details of those talks.
Contacts:
John Hunter, Majestic Realty, (562) 692-9581.
Hadar Plafkin, Los Angeles Planning Department, (213) 580-5554.
Jan Chatten-Brown, Chatten Brown & Associates, (310) 474-7793.
Larry Kosmont, Kosmont & Associates, (213) 623-8484.
Philip Lanzafame, Glendale Development Services Department, (818) 548-2005.
There is no evidence that California's enterprise zone program – the state's largest economic development effort – has increased jobs in program areas, according to a Public Policy Institute of California study. "Our main finding is that, on average, enterprise zones have no effect on business creation or job growth," PPIC researchers Jed Kolko and David Neumark wrote.
A major industrial project in the City of Los Angeles has received approval from the city's new Central Area Planning Commission. However, opponents of the "Cornfield" development next to Chinatown have vowed to continue fighting with a variety of legal and political tools. (See CP&DR Economic Development, January 2000)
The commission voted 4-2 in late July to approve Majestic Reality's plans for a 950,000-square-foot industrial and warehouse development on 32 acres of the 47-acre Cornfield. The commi...
An appellate court has thrown out an environmental impact report for a 17,000-acre-foot water project in El Dorado County because the EIR was predicated on an unadopted, draft general plan. In the same far-reaching opinion, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that the purchase of three reservoirs by an irrigation district was not categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act because the district planned to provide the water for consumption, which would have been a new use.
Th...
The Second District Court of Appeal has thrown out the results of an election in the City of Sierra Madre because the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act.
In a December 1999 decision, the court invalidated an April 1998 election in which voters approved a city-sponsored measure that removed 29 properties from the city's Register of Historic Landmarks. City officials put the issue on the ballot as a way of avoiding a study of the impacts of delisting the properties. But the court sai...
The City of Montclair's ordinance controlling rents in mobile home parks is constitutional, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court rejected mobile home park owners' argument that the ordinance was a regulatory taking without compensation.
Citing the California Supreme Court's decision in Santa Monica Beach, Ltd. v. Superior Court, (1999) 19 Cal.4th 952, the appellate court ruled that "a rent control ordinance is a regulatory taking if it is an arbitrary regulation of property rights....
Construction of a 130-foot-tall cellular telephone transmission tower does not constitute inverse condemnation of a neighboring property from which residents can see the tower, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled.
In a case from Butte County, the court also ruled that the tower did not constitute a nuisance because it did not harm neighbors' use of their property.
"[W]hile we have sympathy for plaintiffs' plight, not all plights give rise to legal rights," Justice Daniel Kolkey wrote for th...
The state Supreme Court has granted a petition for review of a case involving a city's utility user's tax. Six of seven justices voted to review Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. City of La Habra, 1999 Daily Journal D.A.R. 9003, in which the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that the statute of limitations had elapsed for challenging the tax. (See CP&DR Legal Digest, October 1999.)
Lawyers on either side of the case had expected the state's high court would take the case because the decision ...
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The proposal, which is to be formally presented at the end of January, is already proving controversial in the environmental community, and is strongly opposed by Cargill Salt, whose land could...
Despite a developers' decision to drop out of a 40-acre sports-themed project in Anaheim, city officials are keeping the project on track.
Known as Sportstown, the entertainment project is taking shape in the parking lot of the Big A, home of the Anaheim Angels baseball team, and close to the Arrowhead Pond, home to the major league hockey team, the Mighty Ducks.
In November, Cleveland-based developer Forest City Enterprises Inc. dropped plans to develop Sportstown, which is to include sports-theme...
After years of contention, the airport redevelopment planned for the site of the former George Air Force Base in the High Desert of San Bernardino County may finally be getting off the ground.
The former base was annexed by Victorville in 1994 and is now occupied by an airport. The Victorville City Council, which also serves as the Southern California International Airport Authority, received a redevelopment plan from Stirling Enterprises of Laguna Hills at their October 20 meeting.
Afte...
The cities of East Palo Alto and Los Angeles are among 16 cities nationally that have been named Brownfields Showcase Communities. At least 15 federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, took part in selecting the projects. The designation recognizes problem-solving on the part of local government, and entitles the projects to additional federal funding and/or in-lieu services. In addition to funding and in-lieu services, the desig...
As the popularity of motor sports, especially stock car racing, blossomed during the late 1990s and 2000s, a number of would-be race track developers and local government officials in California pursued high-speed economic dreams. However, actually building a race track in California has proven to be far more difficult than proposing a track and even winning development entitlements.
