The lease next door: Playboy studios listed for rent or sale

Here’s your chance to sneak in the playhouse.

As Playboy’s master lease on a 108,000-square-foot studio campus in Atwater Village nears its September expiration, the owner has listed the facility for rent or sale, The Real Deal has learned.

Rent at the property is roughly $2.50 a square foot a month, sources said, valuing the offering — a 15-year, triple net lease — at roughly $48.6 million.

The facility at 3030 Andrita Street — dubbed 3030 Studios — is also for sale, JLL’s Nicole Mihalka told The Real Deal, but there’s not yet an asking price.

Mihalka shares the listing with JLL’s Carl Muhlstein, Hayley Blockley and Jon Lange.

Sitting on four acres of land, 3030 Studios contains three soundstages as well as creative office space. The seller, the Austin-based World Class Capital Group, acquired the property for $25 million in 2013, property records show.

One of the structures at 3030 Andrita Street (Credit: JLL)

Playboy has a 15-year master lease on the entire campus, but it’s been rented out on a stage-by-stage basis for the last few years. “All My Children,” “The Travis Smiley Show” on PBS, and several Netflix projects have used the facility, Mihalka said.

Initially, JLL was tapped to explore leasing opportunities after Playboy’s term ends. But the listing received so many unsolicited offers for purchase that World Class Capital opened up to the idea of a sale.

“We’ve gotten interest from new media companies, studio users, new content creators and e-sport companies,” Mihalka said. “This is a really unique opportunity because they’ve been fully booked for the longest time.”

Studio space is among the most coveted real estate commodities in L.A. right now, with demand drastically outpacing supply, thanks to the rise of new media and the so-called TV renaissance. It doesn’t hurt that California lawmakers recently expanded the state’s tax incentive program for filmmakers to stay local for their productions.

Earlier this year, Hudson Pacific Properties acquired the seven-acre Hollywood Center Studios for $200 million.

It’s senior vice president, Bill Humphrey, told the Los Angeles Times in June that the space was about 90 percent occupied. Hudson Pacific’s biggest fan is Netflix, which inks about 458,000 square feet at the Sunset Bronson Studios in Hollywood.

But for the underdogs out there, 3030 Studio may have one big advantage: it’ll be substantially cheaper than Hollywood, Mihalka said.