East End Studios Lands $130M to Build Boyle Heights Studios

For East End Capital, it’s “lights, camera, action” across Los Angeles, with $130 million in new construction financing to build a 250,000-square-foot film studio near Downtown.

East End Studios, a unit of the New York-based investor, landed the loans to build the East End Studios Mission Campus at 2233-2241 Jesse Street, in Boyle Heights, the Commercial Observer reported.

The $130 million in senior and mezzanine loans were provided by Arkansas-based Centennial Bank and Monroe Capital, based in Chicago. The rest of the funds needed for the $230 million project will come from East End Capital.

In 2021, East End bought the warehouse leased to Glacier Cold Storage next to the Sixth Street bridge for an undisclosed price.

The firm then filed plans to convert the warehouse into a 237,000-square-foot production studio, adding 90,000 square feet to build out four soundstages, offices and storage.

The latest plans by East End Studios call for five soundstages totaling 100,000 square feet, plus 150,000 square feet of post-production facilities, offices, “talent suites” and a commissary.

Completion of the East End Studios Mission Campus near the Arts District is expected sometime next year.

Broker Greg Grant of CBRE helped arrange the loans. Terms of the financing were not disclosed.

East End Studios is among three projects the developer has planned for Hollywood’s entertainment industry in Los Angeles and nearby Glendale.

In June 2022, East End Capital bought two warehouses in the Arts District for $240 million, with plans to build a studio at 1338 East 6th Street and 1321 Wholesale Street.

A couple of months later, the developer unveiled plans to raze the warehouses and replace them with a 720,400-square-foot entertainment complex.

Plans for the $1 billion project call for a 15-acre studio project on East 6th Street, between Alameda and Mills streets. Dubbed the ADLA Campus, it will include 16 soundstages and more than 330,000 square feet of offices and support facilities.

When completed next year, the ADLA Campus beneath the Sixth Street bridge will be among the largest independent studio campuses in the state, according to the Observer.

But that’s not all, at least for East End.

In April last year, East End Capital unveiled the look of its proposed 410,000-square-foot studio campus on 9 acres south of the 134 freeway in Glendale. The East End Studios San Fernando Campus would include 10 soundstages, plus 165,000 square feet of offices and support facilities.

— Dana Bartholomew