Warner Bros. Lands Burbank Lease Deal

By DANNY KING

Staff Reporter

Warner Bros. has signed a lease for the entire 430,000-square-foot Studio Plaza in Burbank, where it will consolidate its film and television divisions in a 15-year deal valued at more than $200 million, according to a source familiar with the transaction.

The studio already subleases about 280,000 square feet in the building, at 3400 Riverside Drive, from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Occupancy is slated for early next year, and will involve moving some operations from the Warner Bros. lot a block away and from smaller buildings in the area.

Officials of Warner Bros. and landlord Douglas Emmett did not return calls. Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Matt Hargrove, representing the tenant, also did not return calls.

The lease is the second major deal in Burbank for an AOL Time Warner Inc. subsidiary in a little more than a year. Last July, Warner Music Group inked a deal for 195,000 square feet at Burbank’s Pinnacle worth about $120 million.

It is also the biggest lease in Los Angeles County in recent memory, dwarfing the Warner Music deal and Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP’s $80 million-plus deal at Arco Plaza for 209,000 square feet in 2001.

Studio Plaza was developed by Coca-Cola Co. as the headquarters of its Columbia Pictures subsidiary in 1988. Columbia was sold to Sony, which master leased the building the following year. Sony takes about 100,000 square feet in the building, which was purchased by Douglas Emmett in 1993 for $83 million.