Engineers building drones and fighter jets could soon replace film and television crews at Manhattan Beach Studios, the 22-acre campus whose soundstages and backlot created the worlds of \u201cThe Mandalorian,\u201d \u201cAvatar\u201d and \u201cThe Avengers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lenders are shopping the studio\u2019s $240-million mortgage to investment firms as an aerospace and defense manufacturing facility after its owner, Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on the loan. The move is symptomatic of a broader economic shift reshaping Los Angeles: while local production slumps through an industry downturn, space tech is booming.<\/p>\n
Sitting in the South Bay\u2019s supply-constrained industrial zone, MBS is a prime opportunity for reuse to meet demand from fast-growing aerospace start-ups, said Mike Condon, executive vice chair at Cushman & Wakefield and one of the realtors pitching the property to potential buyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMBS is kind of a perfect storm because of the physical aspects of the production buildings: high clear height, heavy power,\u201d Condon said. \u201cIt has office space, which a lot of these companies need.\u201d<\/p>\n
The South Bay industrial real estate market spans roughly 201 million square feet, Colliers reported in this year\u2019s first quarter. Condon estimated that only about a fourth of that space could be repositioned for advanced manufacturing, which requires more existing power service, parking and clear height. <\/p>\n
Available facilities that check those boxes are few and far between, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The aerospace companies vying for South Bay land tend to rent, not buy property, Condon said. The region was responsible for most of L.A.\u2019s largest industrial leases signed in the first three months of 2026, Kidder Matthews Inc. reported. That includes a 205,000-square-foot space in El Segundo\u2019s Mattel Design Facility that went to space research company Varda Space Industries Inc.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese tenants are cash-constrained and focused on reinvesting in the business, so we\u2019re not seeing a lot of them actually acquire the real estate,\u201d Condon said. \u201cMost of the groups (we\u2019re pitching to) are investors that are going to reposition the product to lease it to those kinds of tenants.\u201d<\/p>\n
MBS is one of a handful of troubled studio properties in Hackman\u2019s portfolio looking for an out. Before the local production scene saw a downturn, the firm bought the campus in 2019 for $650 million in an acquisition spree that made it the world\u2019s largest independent owner of studio properties.<\/p>\n
In recent years, weak soundstage occupancy has led to a string of defaults on Hackman-owned production facilities. While it looks like the historic Radford Center in Studio City, which the firm reportedly sold to Netflix Inc. at a heavy discount, will continue to produce movies and television shows, repurposing is emerging as a compelling value-add move.<\/p>\n
Soundstages are essentially big boxes designed for acoustic and lighting control, making manufacturing their \u201cobvious alternate use,\u201d said Kevin Donner, vice chair at Cushman & Wakefield. But not all studios fit the needs of heavy manufacturing tenants.<\/p>\n
MBS, home to 15 soundstages, is unique among other similar properties coming online both in its flexible zoning and proximity to L.A.\u2019s aerospace and defense manufacturing hub, Donner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat zoning (on Radford) was a little bit more restrictive,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are other studios, like in Glendale or in the Arts District or other areas where you could probably do less with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Engineers building drones and fighter jets could soon replace film and television crews at Manhattan Beach Studios, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3272,118258,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-312727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-cushman-wakefield","tag-hackman-capital-partners","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}