Hackman's Television City hits $357M default as studio distress grows
The firm that bet biggest on Hollywood soundstages is now handing lenders the keys, and a $1B redevelopment is on hold.
A Deutsche Bank-led lender group has filed a notice of default on more than $357 million against Television City, the 25-acre Fairfax District studio owned by Hackman Capital Partners, pushing one of Los Angeles’s marquee production campuses toward a sale.
Why it matters
Hackman was the most aggressive bidder on Hollywood soundstages, and its unraveling resets land values across a product type developers rushed into during the streaming boom. The firm bought Television City in 2019 for $750 million from CBS and planned a roughly $1 billion redevelopment adding nearly 1 million square feet of offices, soundstages and retail. That business plan collided with a post-pandemic production slowdown, the 2023 strikes, higher rates and studio consolidation. For anyone underwriting studio, office or adaptive-reuse plays in LA, the signal is that soundstage demand no longer supports the basis paid at the peak, and the entitled upside behind those deals is being repriced in real time.
The numbers
The default is one of several across Hackman’s portfolio. At Radford Studio Center, a 1.2 million-square-foot campus, a $1.1 billion mortgage default handed control to Goldman Sachs, and the property is now under contract to Netflix for roughly $400 million. Manhattan Beach Studios is being marketed by Deutsche Bank. Rick Caruso and the Gilmore family have been cited as possible bidders for Television City, which remains in discussions with its lenders over alternatives.
What’s next
Watch the clearing prices as these campuses trade, because they will set the new floor for soundstage and creative-office land in Los Angeles. A Netflix purchase at Radford and a repriced Television City would tell developers what an operator, not a peak-cycle speculator, will actually pay. More at the Los Angeles hub.