Seeks to Build Glendale’s Image, Lure Businesses : New Marketing Center Has Global Goals

A place where Glendale hopes to sell itself to the world opened in the Galleria office tower this week.

The so-called Glendale Marketing Center, unveiled with a series of receptions, features exhibits aimed at persuading businesses to relocate or expand in Glendale. The center opening is part of a $300,000 public relations program shared by the city’s Redevelopment Agency and the Glendale Development Council, a private group of business and civic leaders.

The theme of the campaign is “Move Up to the Glendale Triangle on L. A.’s Leading Edge.” It is supposed to stress Glendale’s easy freeway access, with the downtown enclosed in a triangle of the Ventura, Glendale and Golden State freeways, and emphasize the city’s claim that it is in the forefront of development in Los Angeles County.

Financial Center

With its collection of bank and savings and loan headquarters, Glendale is now the third-largest financial center in California, after downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco, said Christopher Leinberger, president of Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a real estate consulting firm based in Beverly Hills.

The campaign also calls attention to what it characterizes as the pleasant life style and good labor pool in the area.

“We are trying to build an identity. We feel we never had one before,” said Noel Veden, an insurance executive who is president of the development council. He recalled that many people used to be able to geographically place Glendale only when he told them it was between Pasadena and Burbank.

At a press reception on Tuesday, Leinberger described Glendale as one of the 14 “urban villages” that challenge downtown Los Angeles and mid-Wilshire as business centers in the sprawling Los Angeles-Orange counties region. Freeway congestion is a prime reason for the growth of such business centers as Glendale; businessmen increasingly want to work near where they live, he said.

Videotape Presentation

“If you had looked at this town 10 years ago and said that there would be a Galleria and a mixed-use center at Broadway and Brand, people would have thought you were smoking something funny,” Leinberger said.

The marketing center, on the 11th floor of the building at 100 W. Broadway, contains a conference room where a videotape presentation can be shown that stresses the advantages of living and working in Glendale.

It will soon have a computer system listing available commercial space to rent. The office also has a panoramic view of the city, as well as a small-scale model highlighting points of interest.

The center will be open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.