NBCUniversal will build a new broadcast center on its Universal Studios lot to house its West Coast television operations. The announcement of the state-of-the-art headquarters — which will includes newsrooms, production studios and content distribution centers for the LA bureaus of NBC News and Telemundo as well as local stations KNBC-TV and KVEA-TV — comes as NBCU pulled out of plans to move its operations to an office and production complex that was to be built across Lankershim Boulevard atop the Metro Red Line station. That project, which was being developed by LA-based Thomas Properties Group Inc, is now dead, with NBCU set to pay a $9 million breakup fee as part of the agreement — it was to be the complex’s flagship tenant. Thomas said in an SEC filing that the project, dubbed Metro Studios@Lankershim, “was not economically viable at this time,” and that the developer and NBCU on December 19 mutually agreed to to terminate work on it. (The Metro Studios project was not related to NBCU’s greater NBC Universal Evolution Plan, which calls for various upgrades on the 391-acre Universal City property.)

The new headquarters will be a 150,000-square foot all-HD facility, formerly occupied by Technicolor. Construction is slated to be completed in late 2013. “This is a significant investment in our West Coast broadcast operations and ensures that the incredibly talented teams at KNBC, KVEA, and the NBC News and Telemundo’s News Bureau will have the latest technologies and journalistic tools,” said John Wallace, President, NBCUniversal Operations & Technical Services, in the release announcing the project. “It also further consolidates the locations of our businesses, making the Universal Lot the center of our operations on the West Coast.”