Trammell Crow, Clarion Partners Land Major Tenant in Metro Los Angeles

Building 5 at The Center at Needham Ranch. Image courtesy of Trammell Crow Co.

LA North Studios has secured a third location in Santa Clarita, Calif., that will be used to provide major film studios with sound stages.

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The production company signed a five-year lease for Building 5 at The Center at Needham Ranch at 21401 Needham Ranch Parkway. The property owners, Trammell Crow Co. and Clarion Partners, were represented by CBRE’s Craig Peters and Doug Sonderegger in the lease transaction.

LA North will convert Building 5’s 113,640 square feet of Class A industrial space into a satellite sound stage hub to provide production services to its film studio clients, including Warner Bros., Amazon Studios, Showtime, Netflix, Disney and Universal. The property was built with 36-foot clear heights, ESFR sprinklers, 14 dock positions and 204 car parking spaces.

John Balestra, principal at TCC’s SoCal – Los Angeles division, said in prepared remarks that the property welcomed traditional industrial uses like warehousing and last-mile distribution but that the media and entertainment industries also had long-term viability.

With the conversion, LA North is planning to open its location in The Center at Needham Ranch in early 2021. Once open, LA North will have three certified facilities in Santa Clarita that total 277,000 square feet of production space.

Balestra added in his prepared remarks that the Santa Clarita Valley has seen significant growth in the number of local production facilities, adding that the area was a competitive and attractive alternative to Los Angeles.

Two buildings remain

With LA North’s lease, the first phase of The Center at Needham Ranch has two remaining vacant buildings. Lighting company Illumination Dynamics signed the first lease at the industrial park’s Building 1 in May 2019, while beverage manufacturer DrinkPAK signed a seven-year lease at Building 2 earlier this month.

The first phase of the 135-acre business park totals six buildings that range in size from 67,639 to 212,236 square feet and comprise approximately 900,000 square feet of Class A industrial space. TCC and Clarion broke ground on Buildings 4, 5 and 6 in June 2019 and are planning to break ground on the second phase of the project in the fourth quarter of 2020.