Construction to start soon on tower in hot Burbank district.

J.H. Snyder Co. has announced that it will break ground on its Burbank Media Center project in November, making it the first development company to begin construction in one of the county's hottest office markets.

Snyder is partnering with the Boston-based real estate investment trust Beacon Properties Corp. to build the six-story, 585,000-square foot office center, located adjacent to the NBC studio lot. The Snyder Co. will design, construct and lease the $140 million project, and Beacon will provide the financing and own the building once its completed, which is projected for the summer of 1999.

Beacon was acquired last week by Chicago-based Equity Office Properties and the merger is expected to be completed within about four months.

The acquisition should not affect the Snyder project, said Alex McCallum, a spokesman for Beacon.

This is Snyder's first partnership with a REIT, and Beacon's first development project outside of Boston.

Snyder has not yet signed any tenants for the project, although the developers are in "active negotiations" for about 200,000 square feet of space, said Clifford Goldstein, a partner with the Snyder Co.

"We'll break ground with or without those leases, we feel that strongly about the market," he said.

Office vacancies are effectively non-existent in the Burbank Media District, which had a vacancy rate below 1 percent for the first half of 1997.

Accordingly, Burbank's media district gets the highest rents in the market - an average of $26 per square foot annually, compared with the county average of $18 per square foot.

The Burbank Media Center project is asking for rents from $34.30 to $37.20 per square foot. Drew Planting, director of Cushman & Wakefield California, said those prices are in line with the market.

"The Media District is the most prestigious address in town," he said. "It's ground zero."

Ground zero is poised to chum earth. The Snyder project is at the crest of several new development projects about to break ground in the Burbank. About 7 million square feet of commercial development has been entitled for the city of Burbank over the past five years, said Robert Tageue, community development director.

Among the projects in the pipeline:

* Entertainment Partners is constructing its 100,000-square-foot building on Naomi Street and Glenoaks Boulevard, and it should be complete in six months.

* M. David Paul and Associates is entitled to build a 650,000 square foot office project at the corner of Olive and Alameda Avenues. The developer is about to submit plans for the first phase of the project, a 250,000 square foot building.

* The city is reviewing eight applications for its request for proposals for the city's 250,000 square foot property that's the current site of Burbank police headquarters. Several office projects, as well as retail and residential uses, have been submitted, Tageue said.

* Foto-Kern will be building a 65,000 square foot building on Olive Avenue.

* Vestar Development plans to build a 102 acre project in North Burbank. Entitlements are being processed for 2 to 4 million square feet of media-related uses.

Meanwhile, the nearby city of Glendale is slated for new office construction.

PacTen Partners' and Morgan Stanley & Co.'s 500,000-square-foot office speculative office project is under construction in Glendale, and the 360,000 square-foot second phase of the Glendale City Center II is scheduled to go before the city later this month.

Both projects could be completed at about the same time as the Snyder project in Burbank, said Bill Boyd, senior vice president at CB Commercial. Tenants could potentially have more than 1.4 million square feet of new office space to choose from in the Tri-Cities.

There appears to be enough pent-up demand to avoid a glut of office space in the year 2000. Most likely, Boyd said, the different projects will appeal to different users. The 655 N. Central Ave. project is asking about $31 per square foot in rents, compared to Snyder's rents in the mid to upper $30s.