Historic Hollywood Film Lot Is Sold

One of Hollywood’s most storied film lots has been sold.

The former Columbia Pictures headquarters, most recently known as Sunset-Gower Studios, was acquired by Menlo Park, Calif., private equity firm GI Partners. It landed the 17-acre property, which includes the Nickelodeon Theater, from Pick-Vanoff Co. at a price real estate industry sources put at $110 million.

The lot has one of the richest histories in the entertainment industry, dating to a tiny studio that movie tycoon Harry Cohn bought on Sunset Boulevard between Gower Street and Beachwood Drive in 1920. After it became home to Columbia Pictures in 1924, some of Columbia’s most noteworthy films -- among them “It Happened One Night,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “From Here to Eternity” and “Funny Girl” -- were shot there. Some celebrated television shows were made on the lot too, including the 1960s hits “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Bewitched.”

Movies and TV programs will continue to be filmed on the 13 soundstages, GI Partners said Wednesday. Projects underway include episodes of the television shows “Six Feet Under,” “American Dreams” and “Eve.”

Andrew Tainiter, a partner in the equity firm, said it typically invested in businesses “with a high degree of recurring revenue.”

“Sunset-Gower has been one of the premier independent studios for a long time,” Tainiter said.

He wouldn’t disclose what the studio’s revenue stream has been. It makes money renting soundstages, office space and equipment and providing support services such as catering.

Although Tainiter now has an office on the lot, veteran General Manager Steve Auer will run day-to-day operations of the studio, Tainiter said. Cosmetic improvements will be made to the lot, and more stage and office space may be developed, Tainiter said, though he declined to say how much would be spent.

In 1976, the Columbia glory days were over when Pick-Vanoff bought the property for $6.2 million.

Saul Pick and Nick Vanoff got what the industry considered a white elephant that had been so thoroughly looted that it was missing office doors, carpeting and toilet seats. Many of the soundstages had been converted to indoor tennis courts.

Pick and Vanoff renovated the studio, and by 1981 the renamed Sunset-Gower Studios had become a bustling lot, with ABC renting a third of its stages.

In 1983, Pick and Vanoff also purchased the landmark Aquarius Theater, which had been the Moulin Rouge nightclub and the Earl Carroll Theatre. They converted it into a state-of-the art television theater that for nine years was the home of “Star Search” and today is the Nickelodeon Theater.

Pick was a German immigrant who survived a Nazi concentration camp and went on to build a real estate empire in Los Angeles before he died in 2002. He built the Cinerama Dome in 1963 and the two bank buildings on the southwest corner of Sunset and Vine Street. And he turned the former KHJ-TV studio on North Vine Street into a thriving independent television facility that was bought by ABC in 1970.

In 1963, he also built the first high-rise hotel on the Sunset Strip; it’s now called the Hyatt West Hollywood but may best be known as the Continental Hyatt House.

Vanoff was a former dancer and successful television producer born in Greece, whose shows included “The Hollywood Palace,” the second “Sonny & Cher Show” and “Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall.” He died in 1991, a year after winning a Tony Award for best musical for his production of “City of Angels.”

Pick’s son, Mark, took over management of the studio that year. Sunset-Gower wasn’t on the market, Mark Pick said, but GI Partners “was remarkably persistent. The more I said ‘no,’ the more dogged they were.”

Pick said he would miss life on the lot and such memorable moments as the rehearsal for the 1993 Academy Awards where a boa constrictor to be used in the performance of a song from “Aladdin” escaped from its handler and disappeared, sending the rehearsal into chaos. The snake reappeared weeks later hungry but unharmed.

Pick may use profits from the sale to buy another studio, he said.

Sunset-Gower was the third studio to be sold this year. The historic Culver Studios in Culver City where Cecile B. DeMille filmed silent movies was purchased for $80 million in April by a group of El Segundo and New York investors. Last month, a Los Angeles investment banking firm reportedly paid close to $100 million for Manhattan Beach Studios, a 5-year-old studio in Manhattan Beach.

“Even with television and film production improving in L.A. County, only private investors are seeking out these investments,” said commercial real estate broker Carl Muhlstein of Cushman & Wakefield. “You would think the majors who rent them would want to bid on them.”

Film and television producers aren’t putting money into hard assets, he said, preferring to simply rent their facilities and charge the expenses to individual productions.

GI Partners manages a $526-million investment fund backed by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System pension fund and CB Richard Ellis, a Los Angeles-based real estate services company. Most of its properties are telecommunications facilities, such as the Brea Data Center in Brea and Carrier Center in downtown Los Angeles.