Bardas, Bain Get Green Light on Hollywood Studio
A 510K SF complex will rise on the site of a former Sears store.
The Los Angeles City Council has given its final approval to a 510K SF studio complex in Hollywood that will be built by a joint venture of Bardas Investment Group and Bain Capital Real Estate.
The project, known as Echelon Studios, will be built on a five-acre site at 5601 Santa Monica Boulevard that was occupied by a former Sears department store, according to a report in Urbanize Los Angeles.
The partnership bought the property in early 2021 for slightly less than $82M. When it announced the studio project, the venture estimated it would cost $450M to build.
The development will build 110K SF of production studios and support facilities, including four 19K SF soundstages and a 15K SF flex stage, and 388K SF of offices.
The offices will be housed in two five-story towers joined with a bungalow village of executive and creative suites. Echelon Studios will have 12,300 SF of ground-floor restaurants and an underground parking garage for 981 cars.
Rios is designing Echelon Studios, which will new buildings rising up to 93 feet in height along Santa Monica Boulevard, with shorter structures fronting Virginia Avenue to the north. Exterior finishes will include textured plaster cement board siding, perforated metal screens, and glass.
When it approved the project, the city council voided a requirement to dedicate some of the site to widen streets surrounding the studio, which had been a condition when a previous owner proposed a mixed-use project for the site.
The joint venture of West Hollywood-based Bardas and Boston-based Bain was formed in 2019 with plans to build more than 1M SF of new film production facilities.
About a mile away from the Echelon Studios site, Bardas and Bain are undertaking a $600M redevelopment of the former Television Center in Hollywood into a 620K SF urban studio campus to be known as Echelon Television Center.
The 6.4-acre site spans two blocks at 6311 Romaine Street, one of the largest remaining parcels in Hollywood. Bordered by Santa Monica Boulevard and Willoughby Avenue, the location once served as Technicolor’s headquarters and the studio lot for Metro Pictures Corp.
The redeveloped site will reimagine several landmark buildings that were constructed during Technicolor’s golden age in the 1950s. Bardas and Bain bought the site in 2022 for $135M.