Atlas Capital Group has submitted plans for a $650 million project to redevelop the Los Angeles Times downtown printing plant into an 832,190-square-foot creative campus with 17 soundstages.
 
The project, dubbed 8th and Alameda Studios, will span the 26-acre site and feature screening theaters, executive offices, production workspace, restaurants and fitness amenities. The development plans include adding five new structures on the site’s existing parking lot.
 
“This project will become a significant generator of job and tax revenues, bringing in more tech and media companies to the Arts District to replace the many jobs that have since left this area of downtown,” Jeffrey Goldberger, principal and co-founder of Atlas, said in a statement.

“From start to finish, this project will create hundreds of short-term construction jobs and more than a thousand permanent movie, television and sound production-related jobs while resulting in no displacement of residents, housing or small businesses,” Goldberger added.

Atlas Capital purchased the site in 2019 for $241.5 million.

Bastien and Associates Inc. is designing the studio and related buildings. In total, the project will have 272,500 square feet of soundstages; 307,700 square feet of production space; 212,300 square feet of office space; 24,000 square feet of restaurants and foodservice; and 15,500 square feet of fitness facilities.
 
“When we first toured the existing L.A. Times Building, we were so impressed with the quality of construction and how it presented a special opportunity to be converted into a self-contained and full-service movie and television studio facility,” Gary Bastien, lead architect for the project, said in a statement.

“Everything about this project is state of the art, including our design to convert and connect the 11 stages in the redeveloped printing plant through internal ‘roadways,’ making for an amazingly controlled environment for movie and television productions,” Bastien added.

The project will also have a nine-story parking garage Choate Associates Architects is designing. Rios Inc. is handling the landscape architecture.

“This project will transform the L.A. Times Printing Plant site into a connected urban place with an unmistakable tie to its evolving industrial surroundings in the Arts District,” Mark Rios, creative director of Rios, said in a statement.
 
“Its design reinforces vitality at the street edge while transforming the content-
producing legacy of the site into highly sought-after studio, soundstage and production space,” he added.

The project will be built in stages to not interfere with the printing of the L.A. Times.
Eventually, the project will be anchored inside the repurposed printing plant. The plant will be redeveloped into 11 soundstages, production support, executive offices, a full-service restaurant with an outdoor patio, a commissary, a café and a fitness center.

“What Atlas is proposing here is an outstanding repurposing of a property that continues the Industrial District’s tradition of being an economic driver for Southern California,” Estela Lopez, executive director for the Downtown Industrial District Business Improvement District, said in a statement. “The people who will work at this creative campus also represent hundreds of additional customers for community businesses in the area.”