ViacomCBS has reached a $1.85-billion deal to sell the CBS Studio Center complex in Studio City — home to such landmark TV shows as “Seinfeld,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Gilligan’s Island” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Real-estate investors Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to win the competitive auction for the 55-acre Radford Avenue property.
The staggering price tag underscores the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scramble for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. The auction was announced last summer.
The deal, announced Tuesday, represents one of the largest real-estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.
“We’re honored to have been selected as the new stewards of CBS Studio Center, one of the most celebrated and successful studios in Los Angeles,” Michael Hackman, the founder and CEO of Hackman Capital Partners, said in a release.
“The studio has been a hit maker from the days of ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘Mary Tyler Moore,’ and ‘Seinfeld’ and we’re thrilled to continue our ongoing relationship with ViacomCBS to service its many successful shows currently filmed on the lot.”
Hackman Capital Partners is one of the world’s largest providers of entertainment production facilities. It currently owns four studios in the L.A. region, along with studios in New York, New Orleans and London. In 2019, Hackman Capital Partners purchased CBS’ other sprawling complex in Los Angeles for $750 million — the 25-acre Television City that sits adjacent to the original Farmers Market and the Grove.
Hackman Capital Partners also owns the historic Culver Studios in Culver City, where “Gone With the Wind” and “E.T.” were filmed. Amazon Studios now operates from the site. Earlier this year, Hackman Capital Partners bought the Sony Pictures Animation campus in Culver City.
To pull off the deal for the Radford lot, the privately held Los Angeles-based Hackman Capital Partners entered into a partnership with Square Mile Capital Management, a New York-based real-estate and management firm.
CBS, which acquired the property from Republic Pictures in the 1960s, intends to lease back space from the new owners. Its two L.A.-based television stations, KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9, are housed at the CBS Broadcast Center on the Radford lot, and the local news operation will stay put as part of a long-term lease back, ViacomCBS said in its Tuesday statement.
CBS will continue to occupy stages and produce content on the lot. It plans to sign a short-term lease to remain in some of the office space as the company transitions workers to new locations. For 13 years, the Radford property has been the West Coast headquarters of the CBS television network.
CBS Studio Center, which sits just north of Ventura Boulevard, offers 18 traditional soundstages and four other stages. The site also has about 210,000 square feet of production office space and its own mill to provide carpentry services, a paint shop, a commissary and a car wash. It has a backlot with a “Central Park” and “New York Street” with 11 building fronts, including four brownstones. It also includes simulated residential neighborhoods with a hodgepodge of houses with different architectural styles.
Until recent years, it was rare for an entire studio complex to go on the auction block.
Hackman Capital Partners acquired Culver Studios in 2014. Then CBS sold Television City to the firm in early 2019. The same year, Warner Bros. agreed to sell its historic North Hollywood Way facility known as the Ranch lot.
Ever since Viacom and CBS merged nearly two years ago, the New York company has been casting off signature CBS properties in an effort to generate cash. Last summer, it sold CBS’ iconic New York skyscraper known as Black Rock to a privately owned firm, Harbor Group International, for $760 million. The granite tower in mid-town Manhattan, designed by Eero Saarinen, has served as CBS’ headquarters since 1965.
“This sale is part of an ongoing optimization of ViacomCBS’ real estate and operations portfolio and will allow the company to re-deploy capital to strategic growth priorities, including streaming,” said Naveen Chopra, chief financial officer of ViacomCBS.
A year ago, ViacomCBS also announced a deal to sell its book publishing house, Simon & Schuster, to Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House for a whopping $2.18 billion. But earlier this month the U.S. Justice Department sued to block that deal on anti-trust grounds.
CBS Studio Center was the very studio lot that gave rise to the name Studio City.
The transaction is expected to close by year’s end.
“With ViacomCBS maintaining an important presence at the property, we anticipate a smooth ownership transition and many more great years ahead,” said Square Mile Capital CEO Craig Solomon.