Swift Real Estate Partners has paid $92.5 million for Reframe Studios, a 7.3-acre campus with two buildings now being converted into entertainment production space in Atwater Village.
The Reframe campus includes a 189,000-square-foot building at 4561 Colorado Blvd. that is undergoing a conversion to soundstage and creative office space, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal reported. The seller was a joint venture of Captiva Partners, Avalon Investment Co., and a private investor.
The studio makeover, designed by Carlos Carrasquillo of Wolcott Architecture in Culver City, will feature “clear heights” from floor to ceiling of up to 36 feet, plus dock-high and at-grade loading.
A 146,000-square-foot building at the front of the property is being turned into a second studio. Amenities will include two 21,000-square-foot soundstages, as well as accompanying mill, production support and office space.
The project is expected to be completed by the middle of 2023.
“Media and entertainment companies’ continued investment in original programming has led to outsized demand for soundstage space within the L.A. region,” said Thomas Christman, a director of Swift Real Estate Partners, based in San Francisco, in a statement. “Reframe Studios will offer tenants a best-in-class studio experience in the heart of L.A.’s media core.”
In July 2020, Captiva Partners and Avalon Investments paid $38 million to Western Studio Services for the Atwater Village property, according to reports.
Fremantle, the London-based TV production and distribution company behind “American Idol” and “The Price Is Right,” last year signed a 12-year lease for 43,000 square feet in the its north building.
Reframe Studios joins a constellation of entertainment studios in or near the San Fernando Valley, including Quixote Studios, based in West Hollywood, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros., in Burbank, and NBCUniversal in Universal City.
The sale comes amid a surge in production following a pause during the pandemic while demand for content skyrocketed.
Greater Los Angeles has more than 5 million square feet of soundstages, with soundstage occupancy hovering above 95 percent for the past several years, according to FilmLA. More than 1.3 million square feet of new soundstage space is either planned or under construction in Greater L.A., according to CBRE Research.
Last August, Swift Real Estate Partners purchased a 24-story office tower in downtown Oakland for more than $300 million, betting on an eventual recovery in the office market.
In the past few years, the firm has been active in Los Angeles. In late 2019, it paid $193 million for three office buildings in Pasadena. This came after it sold an office building in North Hollywood for $30 million.
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[SFVBJ] – Dana Bartholomew