Action! Mayor Bass pushes studio development

Mayor Karen Bass has spent her first year in office advocating for the construction of affordable housing. But, the mayor has a new item on her agenda: studio development. 

Last week, Mayor Bass announced the city’s support for a new union labor agreement on Hackman Capital Partners’ $1 billion redevelopment of Radford Studio Center, the former ViacomCBS studio lot in Studio City, which gives the project a green light forward. 

Speaking at an event last week announcing the labor agreement, Mayor Bass said the film industry is one of the “most important economic engines” in L.A. And she called on the real estate community to help preserve that.

“We need our partners in the private sector to help ensure our studios remain competitive,” she said. 

The mayor’s address adds to a handful of times in recent months that she has appealed to developers to work with the city on projects. 

Many real estate players have publicly and privately slammed the city of L.A. for having too much regulatory oversight and not being business-friendly, after the enactment of Measure ULA, the hefty transfer taxes on residential and commercial sales over $4 million. 

Mayor Bass has implemented a number of policies to streamline approval processes for affordable housing, including Executive Directive 1, which is supposed to allow 100 percent affordable proposals to bypass lengthy environmental reviews. 

No such policies have been put in place for commercial, or specifically studio, developments. 

But, it hasn’t stopped developers from trying to push for their projects. 

Mayor Bass’ comments come after months of lobbying from both Hackman and other real estate players on studio development and their own soundstage projects. 

Hackman, which bought the decades-old studio for $1.85 billion in 2021, is planning to build 25 soundstages across 2.2 million square feet and more than 1.4 million square feet of office space at 4024 Radford Avenue.

The firm spent $803,000 paying firms in 2023 to lobby the city on two of its large studio plans — Radford Studio Center and Television City, the 25-acre development of the CBS Television City Studios in Fairfax. 

In the second quarter of last year, Hackman and Television Studios were one of the highest paying clients, spending about $209,000 on firms to lobby city council and city planning, public works and engineering departments. 

Bardas Investment Group, which is working with Bain Capital to build a $450 million studio complex in Hollywood that was approved by L.A.’s planning commission in August, spent $380,000 on lobbying efforts from April through June, city data shows. 

About $113,000 of that went directly towards the Hollywood studio complex, dubbed Echelon Studios. It spent a further $295,000 in the third quarter, according to city reports. 

Fox Corporation has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying the city on its redevelopment of the Fox movie lot in Century City, which would add nine soundstages. 

From April through September, Fox spent about $583,000 lobbying the city planning department, city council, the city attorney’s office and neighborhood councils, “seeking support of Masterplan for Fox Studio Lot,” according to a December report from the city’s Ethics Commission. 
Fox has not yet scored city planning approval for its $1.5 billion redevelopment.