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GUEST COMMENTARY - Back in pre-pandemic 2018, Hackman Capital Partners acquired the iconic Television City studios at Beverly and Fairfax, reportedly outbidding some heavy hitters for the 24-acre mid-city property. In July 2022, Hackman unveiled a redevelopment proposal featuring world-class studios on a gauzy green campus and forecasting 8,000-plus entertainment industry jobs.
Right out of the gate, “TVC 2050” looked more like an office park than a studio. Now, as it nears the City Council vote next Tuesday, this shapeshifting “studio expansion” could actually reduce production capacity by 74 percent.
A little background: The prospect of a shiny new studio has had city officials and industry boosters falling all over themselves. The broader community, not so much.
For starters, the proposed project would be twice the size of the Beverly Center, crammed smack in the middle of established residential neighborhoods and low-density commercial development. The “construction window” spans 20 years – four times the duration of WW II, if anybody’s counting. The project lacks definition, and the developer’s application describes the studio expansion as “one possible development scenario.”
Then there’s the unaccountably long delay in publishing the underlying Specific Plan. The Plan, which would remain in effect in perpetuity, calls for a massive zoning change and, in any instance where it runs counter to city code, would override code.
Last month the plot thickened. At the City Council’s Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee hearing on TVC, Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky swooped in with new conditions of approval, made public for the first time. Her new conditions permit the project to go forward with as little as 150,000 square feet of soundstage, production support, and production offices combined.
That means the new requirement vastly undershoots what’s already there. Television City currently has nearly 600,000 square feet devoted to soundstages, production support, and production offices. A minimum of 150,000 square feet sets the stage for a studio contraction, not an expansion.
The TVC project describes – in conceptual terms – a development of 1.7 million square feet. The gargantuan size of the project -- nearly three times the mass of the current Television City -- was premised on providing more studio space to meet the needs of today’s entertainment industry. Now a mere 150,000 square feet of production capacity is deemed adequate?
To be clear, Councilmember Yaroslavsky just proposed, and the PLUM Committee just approved, conditions that allow the project to downsize the production capabilities of Television City by 74 percent. Does anyone seriously think that reserving as little as 150,000 square feet for production will sustain LA’s signature industry?
Over the course of multiple city hearings, Councilmembers customarily set conditions that require developers to address community concerns. Not this time. Hackman Capital Partners is still proposing something wildly out of scale and out of character with its surroundings, asking for 20 years to figure out what to build and where to get the funding, and hedging its bets with a very broad basket of entitlements.
Two years of discussions with the Hackman team and Council office yielded minimal concessions. Now Councilmember Yaroslavsky has given them carte blanche to shrink the studio element beyond recognition.
For the record, we have said from day one that TVC 2050 was bogus. We are not alone. The Environmental Impact Report drew well over 400 strongly worded comment letters objecting to the project and the process. Over the last two years, thousands of community members voiced their concerns. No less than nine legal appeals laid out substantial, well-supported arguments against approval.
Many of those arguments revolve around the difference between the project proposal and the Specific Plan. The project, which is singularly short on substance and specificity, might never go forward. The Specific Plan is the real game because it changes the zoning forever.
Whether Hackman ever puts a shovel in the ground or simply flips the property to some other developer, the Specific Plan will remain in effect, providing development potential that surely increases the market appeal of the old, underutilized lot.
Studio expansions are not exactly a hot item these days. The remarkably vague project and opaque process suggest that Hackman has known all along that studios are worth more as PR tools than they are as investments.
Councilmember Yaroslavsky, the Planning Department, the Planning Commission, and PLUM are all playing along. We have every reason to expect the full Council and Mayor Bass to fall in line and make sure that the top-dollar bid for Television City Hackman made in 2018 will pencil out a decade later.
Will an avalanche of litigation ensue? Stay tuned.
(Shelley Wagers is a veteran community activist. She co-chairs Neighbors for Responsible TVC Development, a loose coalition of community groups, local businesses, and residents who support the revitalization of Television City but object to the scale and opacity of the TVC 2050 project.)
