Prologis Goes Hollywood with DTLA Studio Project

The burgeoning demand for studio and soundstage space from film and streaming content producers, which has generated more than a dozen big-ticket studio developments and transactions this year from New York to LA and places in between, has drawn the attention of the company with the world’s largest industrial footprint.

Prologis, which globally owns more than 1B SF of industrial warehouse space, has filed plans to build a new studio complex in Downtown Los Angeles in proximity to the Arts District.

The studio, to be named Alameda Crossings, will include 10 soundstages and 291K SF of office and support space, will be built on the 9-acre site of a former Greyhound bus terminal at 1716 East Seventh Street that the San Francisco-based REIT purchased last year for $90M.

The Los Angeles market already has an estimated 54M SF of soundstage space, but the demand for new film production facilities has become insatiable to fill the needs of streaming companies spending billions to create new content—demand that has drawn new studios to New York, New Jersey and Georgia as well as the home of Hollywood.

One of the players racing to create streaming content for its film production unit also is the largest tenant of Prologis warehouses, Amazon, although there is no indication yet whether the e-commerce giant will become a tenant at the REIT’s new DTLA studio.

DTLA and its thriving Arts District have become ground zero the surge in new studio soundstages, with several major projects announced in recent months.

In June, New York-based East End Capital purchased for $240M a 15-acre site in the Arts District where it plans to build a studio complex including 17 soundstages and up to 400K SF of office and support space. East End bought the property, including two warehouses at 1338 E. 6th St. and 1321 Wholesale St., from a group that includes MSD Capital, Access Industrial Management and Irvine-based developer Sun Cal.

Atlas Capital Group is developing a $650M studio complex with 17 soundstages and 213K SF of office space at the site of a former Los Angeles Times printing plant in DTLA.

In October, Netflix emerged as the winning bidder for a 293-acre mega-parcel at the former Fort Monmouth US Army base in Monmouth County, NJ. The streaming giant plans to build a film production facility on the site—the second major film studio to be announced in the Garden State in the past month.

A month earlier, Bayonne, NJ officials announced that a 60-acre site next to the Bayonne Bridge, which used to be a Texaco gasoline refinery, will be transformed into a 1.5M SF film and television production facility.

Togus Urban Renewal plans to invest up to $900M to build 1888 Studios—so-named for the year the motion picture camera was invented—a complex that will encompass 17 buildings, including soundstages, flex office space, mills and workshops.