The company signed a long-term lease with HBO and HBO Max for the entirety of the 161,108-square-foot Lot at Formosa in West Hollywood. HBO is owned by WarnerMedia.
The lease is for soundstages, support buildings and production office space.
“HBO/HBO Max has had a decadeslong history of production at the Lot at Formosa,” Shaul Kuba, co-founder and principal at CIM Group, said in a statement. “The long-term lease for the facilities is a mutually beneficial arrangement for CIM Group and HBO/HBO Max and an extension of the strong working relationship that we have developed over many years.”
CIM Group has owned Lot at Formosa since 2007. The campus was built in 1918 and sits on 11 acres at 1041 N. Formosa Ave.
In addition to seven soundstages, the site also has office buildings, three of which were recently completed as part of CIM’s adaptive reuse of the project.
Lot at Formosa is well known in the entertainment industry and has been used for notable films such as “Some Like It Hot” and “West Side Story.”
HBO has filmed at the lot before as well.
“HBO has a long history of filming at the Lot at Formosa, from ‘True Blood’ and ‘Big Little Lies’ to ‘Euphoria,’ most recently,” Janet Graham Borba, executive vice president of production at HBO and HBO Max, said in a statement. “This is a wonderful opportunity for HBO and HBO Max to have a full-fledged, Hollywood studio home, and we look forward to many new productions to come.”
CBRE Group Inc.’s Sean Dodd represented HBO in the lease. CIM was self-represented.
Also in October, CIM Group purchased Cathedral Square, a three-building office campus in Guildford, a business center 30 miles from London.
Savills Inc. advised CIM Group in the acquisition.
“Cathedral Square is a premier creative office campus, an asset type with which we are very familiar as we have developed, own and operate similar assets in markets throughout the U.S.,” Avi Shemesh, a co-founder and principal at CIM Group, said in a statement. “The property’s location, within a regional innovation hub that is attractive to technology, science and knowledge-based businesses, and in a metropolitan area with strong demographics and public transportation, are attributes that align with our program criteria as we enter the U.K.”
Cathedral Square was built in 2000 and consists of three buildings, two of which were remodeled in 2017 and interlock. The third building is three stories tall and is being remodeled into a creative office space with outdoor amenities. It is expected to be finished in 2023.
Cathedral Square is the company’s first transaction in Western Europe as part of its larger value-add strategy in Europe. The initiative is being led by CIM Group’s London-based team.
“With this U.K. acquisition, CIM Group is launching its value-add strategy in Western Europe utilizing our community-focused approach that is a hallmark of the company,” Shemesh said in a statement. “We identified the U.K. as a target market to expand our commercial real estate ownership and property operations after an extensive evaluation of metropolitan commercial real estate markets in Western European countries. This thorough process was undertaken by our team of professionals that are experienced in all aspects of European commercial real estate.”
The company is looking at office, residential, retail and logistics properties in metro European markets.
