ViacomCBS is selling its Radford studio campus in Studio City to a venture of two real estate firms for $1.8 billion, according to reports.
The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday that Hackman Capital Partners in Los Angeles and Square Mile Capital Management LLC in New York had the winning bid for the 40-acre Radford lot and its 18 soundstages, citing people familiar with the matter.
The two sides are expected to sign a contract soon, the people said, and the deal isn’t yet final, the Journal reported, adding that the price was about $500 million more than what the studio was expected to fetch when it was put on the market in August.
The property’s official name is CBS Studio Center, located at 4024 Radford Ave. and has been in use since 1928. It was the location for “Gilligan’s Island,” “Seinfeld,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and other classic television series. Some streets in the complex are named for the shows, such as Mary Tyler Moore Avenue.
In 2018, then-CBS Corp. sold off its 25-acre Television City facility in Los Angeles to Hackman Capital for $750 million, or less than half as much as the Studio City complex.
In January, Hackman Capital and Square Mile acquired the Sony Pictures Animation Campus in Culver City and early this month the pair bought Kaufman Astoria Studios, a world-class destination for film and television production in Queens, New York.
The sale of the Radford lot comes at a time when studio space is at a premium in Los Angeles as streaming companies such as Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have moved to film shows for their networks.