Hackman Capital Partners is buying yet another multimedia studio campus in Los Angeles.
Michael Hackman’s eponymous investment firm is buying Sony Pictures Entertainment’s animation campus in Culver City for around $160 million.
The three-building campus at 9050 Washington Boulevard has a total of 182,000 square feet of office space, according to the Los Angeles Times. It’s next door to Sony’s larger studio lot.
Hackman already owns eight studio lots, home to 70 soundstages with another 35 in development, according to Bloomberg.
The firm has been on a major acquisition run for the last several years, and is arguably the most active studio investor in the L.A. Other firms, namely Blackstone Group, have started to show more interest in the sector. In total, Hackman’s entertainment portfolio is valued at $4 billion. Michael Hackman told Bloomberg that he wants to boost the portfolio to $8 billion by year end.
The pandemic is driving demand for content, tightening an already strong market for production space. In August, Hudson Pacific Properties announced a megadeal, with Blackstone buying a 49 percent stake in its Hollywood office and studio portfolio.
Most recently, Hackman Capital bought the 22-acre MBS Media Campus in Manhattan Beach for $700 million.
It also owns Culver Studios, a relatively small nearby production complex it’s redeveloping with 721,000 square feet of production space, offices, and sound stages. Amazon agreed to lease more than 70 percent of the property for its Amazon Studios production wing.
In 2018, Hackman paid $750 million for Television Studio, the 25-acre production campus in the Fairfax District long-owned by CBS.
And in the biggest portfolio deal of 2020 in New York, Hackman and Square Mile Capital Management paid $482 million for the three-campus Silvercup Studios. It spans more than 10 acres and 23 soundstages. [LAT, Bloomberg] — Dennis Lynch