The owner of Occidental Studios’ Main Lot lowered its price tag.
Los Angeles’ longest continuously running studio lot, where “New Girl” scenes were filmed, came on the market last summer with a $45 million price tag. Now, a year later, Occidental Entertainment Group Holdings is shopping the Westlake production campus for $25 million, according to a brochure viewed by The Real Deal. That’s an about 45 percent decline.
The Main Lot has four soundstages, production offices and support space that total about 65,000 square feet. That means the studio lot went from an ask of about $690 per square foot to around $380 per square foot.
The drop in ask is a reflection of what’s happening throughout the Los Angeles entertainment industry. Shoot days are much lower than what they used to be after dual writers’ and actors’ strikes, media consolidation and more often than not, cheaper costs to make movies and television shows elsewhere. L.A. shoot days in the first quarter were almost 30 percent below the five-year average, and that was after plummeting to a new low last year.
Craig Darian, chair and CEO of Occidental Entertainment Group Holdings, touched on that and more in a statement to TRD.
“Market forces, diminished production and the hyper-speed trajectory of technology are affecting the value of sound stages — especially in Los Angeles,” Darian said. “That said, we’re a privately-held company with no urgency to sell, but for a successor operator that values this legacy asset, we’ll evaluate a sale and the terms thereof.”
Other studio owners, such as Hudson Pacific Properties and Hackman Capital Partners, are feeling the pain, too. Hackman defaulted on a billion-dollar loan on Radford Studio Center. Then the company defaulted on loans on its Manhattan Beach Studios and Television City — and owes around $258 million and $357 million on the lots, respectively. Hudson Pacific made cuts to its Quixote business, which is essentially a studio services provider, after reporting nine-figure annual losses.
Occidental Studios’ Main Lot, a three-acre campus at 201 North Occidental Boulevard, sits near L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown, Echo Park, Silverlake and Westlake neighborhoods — not far from Hollywood. Disney, Paramount, Fox, HBO and Netflix have all filmed there, per the marketing materials that name CBRE’s Nicole Mihalka and Muhlstein CRE’s Carl Muhlstein as brokers. Mihalka said the change in ask is part of a move to broaden the buyer pool. The brochure markets the lot for lease, too, but did not include a price.
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