LA North Studios has signed a lease for 70,550 square feet of industrial space in Valencia for a new soundstage.
The building, located at 28525 Witherspoon Parkway, is built on roughly 5.4 acres.
The facility was previously the long-time corporate headquarters for MechanixWear Gloves. The property, owned by Desert Orchard and Golden Westminster Investments, is part of the master-planned Valencia Commerce Center and it will be repurposed as film and television soundstages, including space for production support and offices.
This latest lease transaction will see LA North Studios – the independent full-service film and television studio founded in 2019 by Anthony Syracuse and John Prabhu – reach a total footprint in the region to more than 460,000 square feet with five production campuses across Los Angeles County. In 2020, LA North signed a five-year lease to take more than 113,000 square feet at The Center at Needham Ranch in Santa Clarita.
“LA North Studios is thrilled to be expanding and moving forward with our fifth location,” Prabhu said in a statement. “This will be the third new long-term lease we have negotiated in the past 12 months. This is a dramatic and modern building with features that make it ideal for us to develop and use as a high-end studio. When this facility comes online in the next couple of months, we’ll have just under a half million square feet of production space in the region and 15 soundstages.”
With the expansion, LA North Studios has become one of the state’s fastest growing independently owned soundstage and production facilities.
“One has to identify and conceptualize the right property when it comes to selecting a production campus,” said Syracuse. “LA North Studios has established a discerning model based upon experience and needs for constructing soundstages that meet the demands of production. By converting industrial buildings into F-1 Certified stages, we’re able to deliver highly functional, cost-efficient stages in substantially less time than purpose-built facilities.”
CBRE’s Craig Peters and Sam Glendon worked on the transaction representing both seller and tenant.
“This building has always been one of my favorites in the market as it is both architecturally impressive and functionally state-of-the-art,” said Glendon. “It has been a flagship property for the entire Santa Clarita Valley since it was built, and I am thrilled to have played a role in its next chapter as a soundstage property – a fitting repositioning given the tremendous recent growth of the film and television business in this area.”
Added Peters: “LA North Studios is on a very short list of groups that are actually delivering stages to a market that is starved for this type of space. We’re thrilled for LA North Studios, for the owner of the building and for the Santa Clarita Valley.”