Construction Project Flips For Big Price

Reframe Studios has a new owner only a year and a half after it was bought.

San Francisco-based Swift Real Estate Partners has purchased the property at 4561 Colorado Blvd. in Atwater Village near Glendale, for $92.5 million, according to reports.

The 7.3-acre campus, which totals nearly 189,000 square feet, is currently going through an adaptive reuse conversion to soundstage and creative office space. Designed by Carlos Carrasquillo of Wolcott Architecture, the space will feature up to 36-foot clear heights, dock-high and at-grade loading in a private campus setting.

Another 146,000-square-foot building at the front of the property is being transformed into a modern studio with amenities including two 21,000-square-foot soundstages with 36-foot clear heights, as well as accompanying mill, production support and office space. 

The project has a mid-2023 completion date.

Western Studio Services had sold the property in July 2020 to a joint venture of Los Angeles real estate firms Captiva Partners and Avalon Investment Co. and a private investor for $38 million.

Last year, Fremantle – the London-based television production and distribution company behind “American Idol” and “The Price Is Right” – signed a 12-year lease for 43,000 square feet of studio space in the property’s north building. 

The sale comes amid a surge in production following a pause during the pandemic while demand for content skyrocketed. Greater Los Angeles has more than 5 million square feet of soundstages, but with soundstage occupancy hovering above 95 percent for several years, according to FilmLA, more than 1.3 million square feet of new soundstage space is either planned or under construction in Greater L.A., according to CBRE research.

Reframe Studios stands adjacent to Quixote Studios and is not far from Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal.

“Media and entertainment companies’ continued investment in original programming has led to outsized demand for soundstage space within the L.A. region,” said Thomas Christman of Swift Real Estate Partners in a statement. “Reframe Studios will offer tenants a best-in-class studio experience in the heart of L.A.’s media core.”