MCA plans to accent entertainment over retail at CityWalk.

MCA Inc.'s plans for development at Universal CityWalk have shifted from a massive retail center to an entertainment center with more theater space and a few more restaurants.

While the company's 1989 plan for the outdoor plaza called for more than 200,000 square feet of retail space, MCA has since decided to stop with the 64,000 square feet of retail space already developed and add another 66,000 square feet of theater space. MCA's revised plan was submitted to the Los Angeles County Planning Department last month.

"It's probably that we feel we have enough retail and we are, after all, an entertainment company," explained MCA Vice President Christine Hanson.

Larry Spungin, president of MCA Development Co., said ideas under consideration include a cinema featuring foreign films and art films, a large-screen movie theater and a jazz club. Hanson said MCA also is considering a playhouse and/or dinner theater.

"We're looking for good ideas that will be as complementary as possible with what we have," said Spungin. "In 1989, we threw a bunch of uses out there. We didn't really have any idea what we were going to do. Then we did surveys and market research.

"It's a kind of evolving process. We know much more about our evolving market now."

The Universal CityWalk property adjacent to Universal Studios and Universal Amphitheater already features a motion simulator theater/ride and an 18-screen motion picture theater. CityWalk also has a dinner/magic show/bar attraction (with adjacent retail store) called Wizards, and a blues club is set to open shortly above Tony Roma's restaurant.

The blues club features a three-level showroom for amplified music and a smaller acoustic room for more intimate shows, Spungin said.

MCA has scrapped plans for a health club, museum and day care center at CityWalk, but plans to add another 43,000 square feet of restaurant space, the revised plan reveals. The first 20,500 square feet will be a new Hard Rock Cafe.

Hanson said MCA opened a health club in the nearby Texaco office building and a child care center for MCA employees behind Universal Studios on the northeast corner of the Universal City property, negating the need for those facilities at CityWalk. The planned "museum" was to be a museum of neon art; instead, CityWalk features neon art on the sides of buildings and in a retail store, Hanson said.

Also, about 100,000 square feet of CityWalk's 495,000-square-foot development plan has been taken up by additional office space not envisioned in 1989. MCA built offices for its Universal Studios Hollywood employees behind the Sam Goody building at CityWalk, Hanson said. The offices are not obviously visible from the CityWalk street.

Hanson said no additional county approval is needed of the revised CityWalk plan, except for building permits necessary for construction.

She said completion of CityWalk -- that is, construction of its final 114,000 square feet of restaurant, theater and storage space -- should take two to five years.

Although Sega Enterprises Inc. announced last month that it was working with MCA on possible development of a "virtual reality" entertainment complex near CityWalk, Hanson and Spungin indicated last week that such a project is only a remote possibility at this point and is not part of MCA's short-term development plans.

When MCA's revised development plan was released, it created a brief controversy because MCA concluded that fewer parking spaces are now required, according to county code, based on property uses. However, Hanson said Universal City has a surplus of parking spaces and will provide its customers with well more than the number of spaces required by the county.