Monday, March 20, 2023

LA Times explores why there are so many castles in Burbank, California

LAT:

before this developer built castles, he made a fortune doing something slightly less whimsical: supplying specialized parts and hinges for the aerospace industry.

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Over the years, [he] reinvested profits into real estate development. He built various residential, industrial and commercial buildings — dressing some of them up as castles along the way.

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Conveniently, building castles doesn’t need to cost significantly more than constructing your average building — at least not the way [he] and his team approached it. “You only needed to modify walls a little bit and put on some extra characteristics that weren’t that much more expensive than a regular block building”

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“We hold a pretty much zero vacancy rate across Burbank in any of the buildings that we own that are in the castle style,” [his son] said. The aesthetic “really appeals to anybody that wants a creative spot to have their business.”