Goldman Sachs Puts L.A.’s Radford Studio Center on Market

Goldman Sachs is shopping the Radford Studio Center after taking it over from Hackman Capital Partners, which defaulted on a billion-dollar mortgage, last month.

The lender tapped Eastdil Secured to market the iconic film lot, according to research and data provider Green Street.

Bids are anticipated to come in at about $450 million, or more than $400 per square foot, per Green Street. That’s about a quarter of what Hackman Capital Partners paid for the real estate five years ago.

The Goldman Sachs-led lending syndicate that hired Eastdil Secured appears to be offering to sell the debt as an option to controlling the property in Studio City, in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.

Hackman Capital Partners purchased the million-square-foot studio, where “Seinfeld” and many more hits were filmed, for $1.85 billion in Dec. 2021. It defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage last June after failed modification talks and extensions. Last month, Hackman handed over the keys to the 55-acre property, a one-time silent movie lot that gave Studio City its name, to lender Goldman Sachs.

An Eastdil Secured representative and Hackman Capital Partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

Hackman Capital Partners, helmed by Michael Hackman, is Hollywood’s largest landlord. The company owns and operates more independent film and television studios than any other.

But the slowdown in Los Angeles’ film industry, due to writers and actors strikes, cheaper productions costs abroad and consolidation, hasn’t made things easy. It’s resulted in soaring vacancies and depressed rents for studio owners.

Radford Studio Center, which was once called CBS Studio Center, is only about 63 percent occupied, and 36 percent of its space has leases set to expire this summer.

ViacomCBS, now Paramount Global, sold the studio to Hackman Capital Partners. It occupies 150,000 square feet of office, studio and production space for the operations of KCAL-TV, KCBS-TV and the CBS News Bureau at the Radford Studio Center, in a lease that expires in 2031, per Paramount’s December 2024 annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.