The former NBC Studios, in what TV host Johnny Carson used to call “beautiful downtown Burbank,” has sold for $375 million to a local developer who previously owned the property and plans to add more soundstages to the legendary lot.
Worthe Real Estate Group and partners bought the 27-acre film and television production facility now known as Burbank Studios from Warner Bros. Discovery after a complicated $1-billion series of transactions over several years that allowed Warner Bros. to expand its Burbank headquarters.
Burbank Studios already has eight soundstages, production and creative office space with a combined total of 685,000 square feet. Warner Bros. has agreed to remain on the lot as a tenant.
Positioned along West Alameda Avenue, Burbank Studios is the former headquarters of NBC Entertainment and the TV home to such talk show giants as Carson and Jay Leno.
Although dozens of new soundstages have been built or planned in the Los Angeles region in recent years, there is room for more in Burbank, said Jeff Worthe, president of Worthe Real Estate Group.
“There have been a fair amount of stages built in the market, but maybe not all in the right location and maybe not all to the right standards that operators would like,” Worthe said.
His company plans to add five soundstages ranging from 18,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet as part of a roughly $100-million first phase of improvements, he said.
The studio is also approved for an additional 400,000 square feet of office space that Worthe may begin to add when the office rental market improves, he said.
Worthe’s partners in acquiring Burbank Studios were QuadReal Property Group and Stockbridge Capital Group.
The former NBC Studios was originally sold to Worthe and Stockbridge in 2007. Worthe and Stockbridge then sold the property to Warner Bros. in 2023 in a complex transaction that included Warner Bros. leasing the adjacent Second Century towers, which were developed by Worthe and Stockbridge and designed by Frank Gehry.
As part of the deal, Worthe and Stockbridge also purchased the Ranch Lot in Burbank from Warner Bros., which agreed to remain as a tenant and rent more than 900,000 square feet of new office space and soundstages at that property. The Ranch Lot improvements valued at $500 million are under construction.
“Throughout history, Burbank has been a center of activity around production and the major studios,” Worthe said. “It continues to benefit from the demand that’s associated with those uses.”
Worthe‘s company owns about 8 million square feet of studio, office and residential property, mostly in Burbank. Its tenants include Comcast, ABC, Walt Disney Co., DC Entertainment, DreamWorks, Microsoft and NBC.