Clarion Acquires Hollywood Media Campus in LA for $61M

The historic Eastman Kodak site in Hollywood was purchased by Clarion Partners from Lincoln Property Co. for a whopping $61.3 million in an off-market deal.

Clarion paid $600 a square foot for the media campus that Lincoln redeveloped. The price is roughly on par with the recent sales in the growing office market.

After extensive renovations of the property, it was renamed the Hollywood Media Campus. The campus now encompasses 102,800 square feet of creative office space with locations at 6700 Santa Monica Boulevard and 1017 North Las Palmas Avenue. Last year, the site was fully leased by film and TV services company SIM Group for a long-term lease for 65,000 square feet of space for office and production.

The property will be continuously managed said David Binswanger, Lincoln's executive vice president. The company will earn a profit from management fees, in addition to the money earned from selling the site, which it acquired for only $24.5 million in 2013.

Representing the sale of the property to Clarion Partners is Nicole Mihalka of JLL.

The purchase of the property after it was renovated by Lincoln is not the first time for Clarion. In 2010, a place developed by Lincoln at Playa Vista campus at 12130 Millenium Drive was sold to Clarion in 2014 for a huge amount of $133 million.

Lincoln has earned well with the several development projects it started over the past four years, and sold them in a market where investors were anxious to acquire. Recently, The Real Deal reported that the developer is under contract to sell the Desmond in Downtown Los Angeles for $48.5 million to AEG.

There is a strong motive for Clarion to invest in Hollywood as the rental rates for Class A projects in the Hollywood/Silverlake were $4.21 a square foot a month in the fourth quarter, an increase from $3.59 in the same period last year, according to a report from Savills Studley.