ViacomCBS Looking To Sell CBS Studio Center In The Valley
ViacomCBS is taking steps to sell off a sprawling Studio City property composed of soundstages where classic and contemporary shows were filmed, studios for local TV stations and CBS' West Coast network headquarters.
CBS CEO George Cheeks told employees in a memo that the company had hired JLL to look into selling CBS Studio Center, Bloomberg reported. The 40-acre Studio City site along Radford Avenue features 18 soundstages. It is being marketed for an undisclosed price, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.
The property dates back to the late 1920s, when Studio City was still a brand-new development. The first studios at what is now the CBS site were opened by silent film director and studio owner Mack Sennett.
Later, it was where classics including Gilligan’s Island and the modern hit Big Brother were filmed. It has also been home to CBS’ LA-based television stations, KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9, since 2007 and the West Coast headquarters of the CBS TV network since 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Similar to our announcement last week regarding the sale of Black Rock in New York, this aligns with our strategy to divest non-core assets like real estate and direct that value to priorities such as creating more of our best-in-class content,” Cheeks wrote.
Earlier this month, Harbor Group International announced it had entered into an agreement with ViacomCBS to purchase the CBS Building in New York, also known as Black Rock, for $760M. It will be the first time since the office building opened in 1964 that it has traded hands.
The Studio City property hits the market as the demand for production space has boomed, spurred by growing consumer desire for streaming content following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Online video subscriptions in the U.S. rose 32% year-over-year to 308.6 million people in 2020, according to a June report from CBRE. Fifty-five percent of adults reported their viewing habits shifted because of the pandemic, in favor of watching more streaming video than they previously did, CBRE said.
Plans to build new ground-up production and soundstage space have proliferated in the last year and a half. Hudson Pacific Properties and Blackstone Group are working on a $190M project in Sun Valley to build Sunset Glenoaks Studios. Near Downtown LA, Atlas Capital Group is planning a $650M redevelopment of the LA Times printing plant into soundstages, production and production support space. In Fairfax, Hackman Capital Partners is looking at spending over $1B to add 1.1M SF of soundstages, related office space and other upgrades to Television City, a former CBS property that Hackman purchased in 2018 for $750M.
