Why did Radford Studio Center default on its loans?

In the glittering yet unforgiving world of Hollywood real estate, Radford Studio Center has become the latest casualty of economic headwinds. Owner Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on a staggering $1.1 billion mortgage after failed attempts to restructure the debt with lenders led by Goldman Sachs. Plummeting revenues—covering just 21% of servicing costs amid an industry slowdown—coupled with soaring interest rates and a mere 63% occupancy, sealed the fate of this historic lot, forcing Hackman to hand over the keys.

The perfect storm

Radford Studio Center’s woes deepened as negotiations with lenders, spearheaded by Goldman Sachs, hit a wall. Hackman Capital Partners couldn’t rework the terms, opting instead to surrender the property. This move underscores how fragile Hollywood’s real estate bets can be when market tides turn against them.

Beyond stalled talks, the studio’s cash flow suffered from occupancy hovering at just 63%, with numerous leases on the brink of expiration. Rising interest rates jacked up debt costs, leaving revenues woefully short—covering a scant 21% of obligations amid a broader industry slump.

Hackman had banked on ambitious startup plans and expansions fueled by earlier boom-time valuations, but those visions fizzled. As production slowed and tenants pulled back, Radford Studio Center couldn’t sustain the financial load, paving the way for this high-stakes default.

Broader Hollywood slump

Radford Studio Center’s default reflects a wider Hollywood production slowdown that’s hammered studio revenues since 2025. Reports from Bloomberg and Variety note how streaming cutbacks and labor strikes reduced filming activity, leaving lots like this 55-acre historic site underutilized and financially strained.

Hackman Capital Partners, dubbed the world’s largest independent studio owner, acquired Radford amid a pre-slump boom but faced defaults on payments as early as last year. With CMBS loan pressures mounting, the firm couldn’t refinance amid rising rates, per The Real Deal‘s coverage.

This handover to Goldman Sachs highlights risky bets on entertainment real estate. As occupancy dipped and leases expired, Radford Studio Center’s cash flows couldn’t keep pace, signaling potential distress for other LA production hubs in this ongoing industry contraction.

Inside what the money men see

The potential closure of Radford Studio Center isn’t just another sad Hollywood story — it’s a financial case study in what happens when real estate logic collides with a contracting entertainment industry. What’s unfolding has little to do with nostalgia or creative legacy and everything to do with leverage, vacancy, and timing. A $1.85 billion acquisition at the peak of the streaming boom, backed by massive debt and optimistic growth assumptions, is now running headlong into a slower, more consolidated production market. As tenants thin out and promised capital improvements fail to materialize, lenders—not producers—are positioned to decide what comes next. The numbers below don’t speculate about motives or outcomes; they outline the hard financial facts driving the conversation. And those facts explain why fears of redevelopment, rezoning, or outright loss of studio space aren’t alarmist—they’re rational responses to what the balance sheet is signaling.

Radford Studio Center — known financials & signals	Detail
Purchase price (2021)	~$1.85B (acquired from ViacomCBS)
Owner	Hackman Capital Partners
Debt in question	~$1.1B loan
Current status	Loan default; property to be turned over to Goldman Sachs
Occupancy	Less than 50% leased (per sources)
Revenue condition	Persistent vacancy; declining on-lot services
CapEx promised	~$1B renovation announced in 2023
CapEx delivered	Largely unrealized
Operating signals	Empty lots, early cafeteria closures, minimal daily activity
Tenants remaining	CBS News, Entertainment Tonight (limited)
Alternative use discussed	Residential redevelopment previously “considered”
Underlying land value driver	Studio City location, surrounding residential desirability
Lender incentive	Maximize recovery via highest-and-best-use, not studio ops
Market context	Streaming contraction, studio oversupply, capital pullback

Investor disclosures

Last month, Hackman Capital Partners alerted investors that it had suspended negotiations to restructure the $1.1 billion mortgage on Radford Studio Center, according to Bloomberg reports. This abrupt halt accelerated the default process, as the firm chose to relinquish control rather than prolong fruitless talks with lenders amid mounting financial pressures.

Public sentiment on X reveals growing backlash against such deals, with users criticizing private equity tactics that load properties like Radford Studio Center with heavy debt. Accusations of fraud highlight how aggressive leveraging can backfire, especially when industry slumps expose vulnerabilities in high-stakes real estate plays.

Looking ahead, Goldman Sachs’ takeover raises queries about Radford Studio Center’s trajectory—could revitalized production or new management breathe life into the lot? This saga echoes the corporate intrigue of shows like Billions, but with tangible impacts on Hollywood’s infrastructure and workforce stability.

Financial strains mount

Radford Studio Center’s default mirrors a rash of commercial real estate woes, with firms like Brookfield and Starwood also surrendering properties amid rising vacancies and debt loads. Hackman Capital Partners’ misstep highlights how aggressive leveraging during booms leaves assets vulnerable when markets cool.

Posts on X capture public frustration, labeling such private equity maneuvers as predatory, especially as Radford Studio Center’s handover disrupts local jobs and production pipelines. This echoes past cases where overleveraged deals crumbled under economic pressure, per analyses from Bloomberg.

Yet, experts cite studies from Commercial Observer noting that while defaults spike in slumping sectors, strategic takeovers like Goldman Sachs‘ could stabilize sites like Radford Studio Center, potentially averting deeper fallout for the film creative ecosystem.

Analysts point to Radford Studio Center’s dire revenue-to-debt ratio—covering only 21% of servicing costs—as a textbook case of overleveraging in volatile markets. Industry slowdowns amplified this, with production halts slashing income, per reports from Bloomberg, leaving no buffer against economic shifts that experts had long warned about.

Previous popular opinions hailed Hackman’s acquisitions as savvy expansions during Hollywood’s streaming boom, but hindsight reveals the pitfalls. Studies from Commercial Observer show how such boom-time valuations often ignore downturn risks, as seen in Radford Studio Center‘s unmet startup plans that crumbled under sustained financial strain.

For Radford Studio Center, rising interest rates turned a manageable loan into a crushing burden, with occupancy at 63% and expiring leases eroding cash flow. This aligns with broader analyses indicating that without adaptive strategies, even historic sites face default, urging a rethink of debt-fueled growth in entertainment real estate.

What Could Happen to Radford Studios?

The future of Radford Studio Center is suddenly an open question—and not because Hollywood forgot how to make television.

When a studio owner defaults on a $1.1 billion loan, the conversation shifts fast. This stops being about legacy, plaques, or what Seinfeld once meant to the city, and starts being about balance sheets, zoning maps, and “highest and best use.” That’s why so many industry observers are already whispering the same word: housing.

Once lenders take control, sentimentality disappears. Banks don’t run soundstages. They stabilize assets, maximize value, and exit. In a city with a housing crisis and political pressure to rezone large parcels, a half-empty studio lot in Studio City doesn’t look like a cultural institution—it looks like underutilized land.

The warning signs are all there. Persistent vacancy. Shrinking on-lot services. A decade-defining streaming boom that never delivered long-term tenants. Promised billion-dollar renovations that never materialized. Even the language around the property has shifted, with sources openly acknowledging that residential redevelopment was once “considered.” In real estate terms, that’s not a rumor. That’s an option being priced in.

None of this means Radford will disappear. One outcome is a partial preservation model: some stages retained, excess land carved off for mixed-use or residential development. Another is a sale to a deep-pocketed media buyer willing to gamble on a production rebound. A third—and the one that alarms creatives most—is a full pivot away from filming altogether.

What’s driving the anxiety isn’t nostalgia. It’s precedent. Across the world, legacy studio sites have quietly become condos once ownership changed hands and production slowed. Hollywood history doesn’t protect land from market forces.

Radford’s fate will ultimately be decided not by how iconic it is, but by what it earns—or fails to earn—on paper. And right now, the math is doing most of the talking.

Why “Studios” With No Studios Keep Surviving in Los Angeles

The quiet mystery around projects like Echelon Studios isn’t really a mystery at all—it’s how real estate narratives work in Los Angeles.

For years, vast parcels across LA have been branded as “future studios” while remaining little more than fenced lots, dirt pits, and glossy renderings. No tenants. No active productions. Sometimes not even a soundstage frame. Yet the projects persist, refinance, and resurface in trade headlines as if momentum alone were a business model.

The first trick is language. Calling something a studio instantly wraps it in Hollywood legitimacy, even when no cameras have ever rolled. Investors don’t underwrite current cash flow; they underwrite optionality. A studio site isn’t valued on bookings today, but on what it could become if production returns, tax incentives improve, or a streamer changes strategy. Hope gets priced in.

The second factor is timing arbitrage. Many of these projects were financed at the peak of the streaming boom, when “content demand” was treated as infinite. Loans were structured with long runways, interest-only periods, and assumptions that tenants would arrive later. When they didn’t, the land itself became the backstop.

Third: zoning leverage. A permitted or permit-adjacent studio site is effectively a rezoning chip. Even if production never materializes, the land can be repositioned later for mixed-use, residential, or commercial development. Calling it a studio keeps political doors open while the clock runs.

Finally, there’s opacity. Unlike operating studios, empty projects don’t publish occupancy rates, stage utilization, or client lists. Absence of evidence becomes evidence of “being early.”

So the con—if you want to call it that—isn’t that these projects exist. It’s that they’re still discussed as production infrastructure rather than what many of them actually are: long-term real estate plays wearing a Hollywood costume.

In LA, sometimes the hole is the product.

How BlackRock Quietly Took Over Sunset Studios and Quixote

There was no splashy press tour, no victory lap, no loud declaration that private equity had officially won Hollywood real estate. That’s exactly the point. BlackRock didn’t storm into Los Angeles production infrastructure — it absorbed it.

Over the last few years, BlackRock methodically bought into Sunset Studios and Quixote, two companies that sit at the unglamorous but indispensable core of physical production. Stages. Trucks. Base camps. Parking. The boring stuff that actually keeps sets running.

The strategy was classic BlackRock: buy assets with predictable demand, fragmented ownership, and emotional operators. Sunset Studios owned land and soundstages in prime LA locations. Quixote controlled the mobile infrastructure nearly every production touches. Neither needed hype. They needed scale, capital, and patience.

Crucially, these weren’t content bets. BlackRock wasn’t gambling on which shows would win awards or which streamer would survive consolidation. They were betting on gravity. If anything films in Los Angeles, it needs stages and trucks. If production slows, the land still appreciates. If production rebounds, pricing power snaps back instantly.

The deals were structured quietly because loud deals invite scrutiny — from regulators, unions, and city councils. By the time most of the industry noticed, control had already shifted. Operators still ran day-to-day. The logos stayed familiar. But the balance sheets changed.

What this move really signaled was a phase shift. Hollywood stopped being viewed as a creative ecosystem and started being treated like infrastructure. Roads don’t need buzz. Warehouses don’t need headlines. They just need to be unavoidable.

BlackRock understood something many studio owners didn’t: you don’t have to believe in the future of entertainment to make money from it. You just have to own the ground it stands on — and the trucks parked on top.

How Private Equity Risks Turning Los Angeles Into the Next Detroit

Los Angeles is flirting with a dangerous illusion: that you can strip out the industry that animates a city and still cash in on the land it once sustained.

Private equity sees LA not as an ecosystem, but as acreage. Soundstages become “underutilized parcels.” Backlots become “mixed-use opportunities.” Studios become line items to be optimized, flipped, or quietly dismantled. The logic is simple: pave paradise, put up apartments, and let rent do the work.

The problem is what comes next.

Cities don’t survive on buildings. They survive on people with reasons to be there. The movie and television industry isn’t just a cultural export — it’s the economic engine that fills those apartments with humans who can actually pay rent. Kill or hollow out that engine, and you’re left with concrete waiting for tenants who never arrive.

Detroit didn’t collapse because it built housing. It collapsed because it lost the industry that justified the housing. When manufacturing left, the buildings stayed — empty, depreciating, and eventually toxic. LA risks a version of the same mistake, just with better weather and nicer branding.

Film and television are not interchangeable with “creative vibes” or influencer economies. They generate middle-class jobs at scale: crew, drivers, editors, caterers, accountants. These aren’t tourists. These are residents. Remove that employment base and you don’t get a sleek new urban future — you get vacancy, churn, and a hollow city propped up by speculative finance.

Private equity doesn’t care. Funds exit before consequences mature. If the apartments lease for a few good years, the model “works.” What happens after — declining demand, falling rents, empty units — becomes someone else’s problem.

The irony is brutal. By erasing the movie industry to unlock short-term real estate value, investors may be destroying the very demand that made Los Angeles valuable in the first place.

You can’t monetize a city forever if you evict the reason people came.

A cautionary tale

In the end, Radford Studio Center’s default boils down to overambitious debt in a cooling market—failed restructurings, anemic revenues, and unrealized expansions amid Hollywood’s slump. As Goldman Sachs steps in, this sobering chapter urges caution for industry players, sparing a thought for the workers caught in the crossfire of high-finance fallout.