New Chelsea Backer Funds Studio Property With £262M
Cain International, the property company co-owned by some of Chelsea FC’s new ownership consortium, has provided a £261M loan to a new film studio development to the west of London.
Cain has agreed a £262M development loan with Shinfield Studios for what will be one of the UK’s largest film and television production facilities, in the growing studio real estate sector.
Cain is co-owned by Jonathan Goldstein and Todd Boehly, part of the consortium finalising a deal to buy Chelsea from sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
The loan will support the development of a film and television production campus that will comprise a total of 943K SF including 18 soundstages across more than 437K SF, as well as 192K SF of office accommodation, 266K SF of workshop space and ancillary space.
To date, four soundstages have been completed and are fully let to a large production company, with the remainder of the project scheduled to deliver in phases beginning in the first quarter of next year.
Delivering in phases between early next year and the third quarter of 2024, Shinfield Studios will be located near Reading, 42 miles to the west of London, and is set to serve what Cain said is rapidly expanding market demand. Streaming companies’ production spending has been on a consistent upward trajectory in recent years: 2019’s record total was 85% higher than five years earlier. In 2021, Lambert Smith Hampton forecast an estimated UK supply shortfall of 2.3M SF.
Shinfield Studios is the first UK outpost of BGP HoldCo, a global soundstage platform controlled by affiliates of Los Angeles-based Commonwealth Asset Management. Currently doing business under the Blackhall Studios banner, the platform operates an 850K SF, nine soundstage production campus in Atlanta.
In addition, the BGP platform is simultaneously developing approximately 2.5M SF of additional production space across two purpose-built studio campuses in Atlanta and Los Angeles. Upon completion of these development projects, Blackhall Studios will own and operate a portfolio of properties that boasts 64 soundstages and more than 4.2M SF of lettable area, making it one of the largest operators in the sector.
