Two Urban Land Institute (“ULI”) Women’s Leadership Initiative (“WLI”) GROW mid-career mentorship groups gathered in downtown Culver City last month for a private tour of The Culver Steps and The Culver Studios, adjoining landmark projects underway by Hackman Capital Partners, a Los Angeles-based privately-held real estate investment and operating company (“Hackman Capital”). Led by Ryan Smith, Executive Vice President of Hackman Capital, the groups received an inside look at the two ongoing development projects and insights into the rapidly evolving studio landscape in Los Angeles.

In 2014, Hackman Capital purchased The Culver Studios, the 101-year old film and television studio lot, for $89,000,000. Home to many well-known motion picture productions, including Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind and E.T., the studio lot comprises over 14 acres. Hackman Capital recruited San Francisco-based architectural firm Gensler to design a state-of-the-art transformation of the property that will modernize the old studio by more than doubling its size while preserving the property’s historic structures, including transecting, relocating and reattaching the original bungalows. At completion, The Culver Studios campus will total 720,850 square feet – including 619,850 square feet of creative office and state-of-the-art production support space, 96,263 square feet of stages and 4,736 square feet of stage support space.

Additionally, in late 2016, Hackman Capital acquired the rights to own and develop The Culver Steps, adjacent to the studio and comprising 115,000 square feet of creative office and retail space over roughly one acre of land. Through negotiations with Hackman Capital, Amazon will occupy the entire four-story office portion of The Culver Steps in addition to the entirety of the new office development of The Culver Studios, together with its historic mansion and bungalows, on which it signed a 15-year lease.

These real estate projects are an illustration of a new phenomenon – the convergence of what happens when “Northern California tech meets Southern California media,” Smith describes. As evidenced by these projects, there is a tremendous appetite by leading content creators for large, centrally located spaces in order to accommodate new trends in the entertainment industry, namely digital streaming services and their inherently growing consumer demands.

With Amazon’s occupancy of the majority of The Culver Studios, Smith notes that “the value here is not created by the type of construction,” instead recognizing that “the value is the entitlements that allowed for this kind of lease to be done with such a substantial tenant that basically gobbled up all of the square footage.”

The significant redevelopment of The Culver Studios project has not come without challenges. The biggest setback, according to Smith, was losing 45 days on the construction schedule due to last year’s unusually wet Los Angeles winter. As Smith describes it, the six-acre dig site was “the world’s largest bathtub for a while.” However, after implementing an accelerated overtime schedule, Hackman Capital’s construction team brought the project back on track in anticipation of Amazon’s expected arrival at the end of 2020.

Additionally, Amazon’s entrance into Culver City is estimated to bring roughly 4,200 “Amazonians” to the area, increasing a growing need for local housing. Several large-scale residential and mixed-use developments, such as Ivy Station, located at the intersections of Venice, Washington and National Boulevards, will provide timely deliveries of new units to accommodate the demand created by the influx of technology and media employees. In adding more density into the vicinity, however, developers will need to tackle Culver City’s 56-foot height limitation currently in place for the construction of new commercial buildings.

Nevertheless, the positive impact of these projects on the neighborhood cannot be understated. Emily Murray, mentor for the ULI WLI GROW downtown Los Angeles group, says The Culver Studios is a “really exciting project both for the film and television industry and for the future of Culver City. It’s a great example of an ambitious development that nevertheless honors the history of the site.” ULI WLI GROW mentee Rita DeBoer acclaims, “it is exciting to think about the transformative effect [these] projects will have on Culver City!”

These private developments will also bring new public places for Culver City residents to enjoy. Hackman Capital and the City of Culver City have been working together to transform the 35,000-square-foot public plaza, running contiguous to The Culver Steps and The Culver Studios, into Culver City’s new central hub. Through long-standing negotiations with the City to enter into a Reciprocal Easement Agreement, Hackman Capital will manage and operate the plaza, which is set to open in June of 2020 and will feature a pipeline of over 100 events per year. Some items on the roster will include a summer concert series and fall movie screenings, surrounded by shady trees, grassy areas and comfortable bean bag chairs. As ULI WLI GROW mentee Ada Peng remarks, “I appreciated how open/public spaces are used to elevate and connect all the different pieces.”

When asked to offer a lesson learned from these developments, Smith shifted away from construction and operating details to instead emphasize the importance of public outreach and community support. “With a project of this size in an urban core where there is a real shift in what is being replaced, it is never too early and there is never enough outreach that can be done. We highly value feedback and ideas from the community,” he posited. In the planning stages of these projects, Hackman Capital incorporated feedback from all types of constituents – residential and commercial neighbors, city council members, city staff members and other community stakeholders. Smith continued, “It excites people and it makes them feel like they’re part of something that’s being built in their community, and they should feel that way.”

With Amazon and other similar media and technology companies migrating to Southern California, content creation is here to stay. Hackman Capital’s next large undertaking will be the modernization of the 25-acre CBS Television City studio complex, located just north of The Grove in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. Hackman Capital plans to address any challenges it faces at the CBS lot in a similar manner as it did with its Culver City projects – by focusing on grassroots efforts to engage with the community and provide new exciting spaces for the next generation of entertainment providers.

If you would like to learn more about the ULI WLI GROW (Growth Relationships and Opportunities at Work) mentorship program, please contact April Sandifer at [email protected] or (213) 221-7827 x103.