BURBANK : Jobs Campaign Nets Two New Businesses

The U.S. headquarters for a multinational insurance company and a Hollywood-based radio station are moving to Burbank in June, said city officials who, for the past year, have been running an active campaign to bring jobs to the city.

Burbank offered $250,000 in tax rebates to Allianz Insurance--which is based in Germany and has offices in downtown Los Angeles, Woodland Hills and Glendale--and $50,000 to KIIS Radio, now on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

KIIS Radio, with about 60 employees, will move its offices to Studio Plaza in June. Allianz Insurance plans to bring the 320 employees now working in the area to Riverside Drive in a building owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment Corp.

The recruitment of the two companies caps the first year of an economic incentive program that started in March, 1993, with the aim of restoring jobs to Burbank. The city lost about 15,000 workers when Lockheed Corp. began a pullout in 1991.

So far, the economic incentive program has created 444 new jobs for the city and kept the employers of another 336 workers from leaving. The program has used a variety of incentives.

Ryan Herco, an industrial supply company in Burbank for 45 years, had considered leaving town until the Burbank City Council helped finance improvements to another site in the city that Herco moved into. In another example, the city guaranteed a $100,000 loan for another company that wanted to expand.

“None of these deals really costs us any money,” said James O’Neil, special assistant to the Burbank community development director. O’Neil said that by helping businesses expand or move into the city, revenues from sales and property taxes are boosted. The incentives have helped lure companies that would have gone elsewhere and kept businesses in the city that had been seriously considering moving, he said.

Although many of the deals--like a $20,000 loan to a marketing research firm approved by the City Council earlier this month--are financial, some of the incentives are simpler, like solving a parking problem for companies that would otherwise move out of town, O’Neil said.

In all, the city financial packages--either tax rebates, forgivable loans or loan guarantees for companies--total nearly $800,000 in the first year of the economic incentive program, which averages out to about $1,000 per employee.