Shamrock

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An investment group led by Shamrock Holdings began construction on 11 sound stages and related offices in Manhattan Beach last week, and announced that it has signed Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. as anchor tenant.

Fox signed a five-year lease for five of the 11 stages along with 76,000 square feet of office space. Fox also has the option to lease the other six stages.

The $77 million Manhattan Beach Studios project is designed to contain 14 sound stages for TV and feature film production, along with offices and a commissary on a 545,500-square-foot campus. The project site is located at the corner of Redondo and Rosecrans avenues.

Completion of the portion currently under construction is scheduled for summer 1998.

The project is launching at a time when studio space in the county is scarce. The county’s 57 sound stages that each have more than 15,000 square feet of space are all booked until the end of 1998, according to the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., a public agency that handles film permits.

There are several other L.A.-area studio and sound-stage projects in various stages of development:

– In Culver City, LuxCore LLC announced this summer that it plans to build a $150 million facility on a 12-acre site near the intersection of the Marina (90) Freeway and the San Diego (405) Freeway. The developer is working toward securing the necessary government approvals for the proposed 825,000-square-foot studio, said James Magowan, a LuxCore principal.

– In Santa Monica, the city planning commission staff is expected to deliver a final environmental impact report on Dec. 3 for Santa Monica Studios’ proposed $89 million film and TV studio. Pending certification of the final EIR, the project will be voted on by the City Council in early 1998.

The proposed 390,000-square-foot project, located at 3025 Olympic Blvd., is designed to include production space, residential lofts and a restaurant.

– In downtown L.A., the development firm Smith & Hricik in partnership with Hillman Properties has filed an application to build six sound stages on the site of Unocal Corp.’s former headquarters. The proposed 155,000-square-foot center would be the first production facility in downtown.

Even if the almost 1.5 million square feet of combined development proposals receive building permits and begin construction, the new facilities would be “just a drop in the bucket” of what the major studios need to provide programming for the growing television, foreign and satellite-TV markets, said Cody Cluff, president of the EIDC.

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