Owner Of Lionsgate Studio In Douglasville Lands New Loan
An Atlanta-area movie studio leased to the production company behind the John Wick films and the TV show Mad Men has refinanced a loan with the help of a sustainability-focused program.
New York-based Great Point Studio Management obtained a $52.4M loan from Atlanta-based Peachtree Group for its Atlanta-Lionsgate Studios property in Douglasville.
The 30-year loan was made through Peachtree Group’s commercial property assessed clean energy lending platform, said Jared Schlosser, the firm's head of originations and C-PACE lending.
The deal is a plot twist to the Y’allywood story in Georgia, beset by a massive slowdown in film and television productions and a shrinking pool of film studio space in the metro area as some owners pivot to other uses. Georgia’s tax credit for film and television production — one of the biggest in the U.S., granting companies up to a 30% tax credit for filming in the state — helped to fuel the state's studio industry since its passage in 2005.
The slowdown has already had ramifications for the film industry’s real estate sector. Last month, Goldman Sachs took over the Radford Studio Center after its previous owner, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on its $1.1B mortgage, Bloomberg reported.
Great Point was likely helped by having a long-term lease with Lionsgate for use of five of the stages. And it’s a lease that has corporate guarantees, Schlosser said.
“It’s a pretty decent tenant to have, so you’re not taking on the risk that you’re taking on with other studios where the operator has got to bring in enough pictures … to cash flow,” Schlosser said. “From a credit perspective, we probably got the higher proceeds on this than we could have gotten from another studio.”
Great Point finished construction on the Lionsgate campus in 2024 after spending $160M to build it out, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The campus consists of eight purpose-built stages totaling 145K SF, a 67K SF production office, mill shop space and an on-site restaurant, according to Great Point’s website.
The studio obtained a $60M loan in 2023 from an LLC attached to New York-based Diameter Capital Partners and a secondary lender, according to records in the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority database.
That loan was originally set to mature June 1, 2024, but was amended in December of that year, pushing the maturity date out to Feb. 14, 2026. Deadline previously reported that Great Point developed the studio in a joint venture with an affiliate of the investment firm Lindsay Goldberg.
Great Point didn't respond to Bisnow's request for comment on the deal.
The new loan, first reported by Commercial Observer, comes as the use of C-PACE financing has accelerated over the past year.
C-PACE loans are public-private financing partnerships that allow developers to fund the cost of constructing efficiency and resiliency features on real estate projects with long-term, fixed-rate financing with repayments made through a special property tax assessment.
In the case of Great Point, the C-PACE loan allows it to get reimbursed for development costs on water efficiency, lighting, mechanical systems and the HVAC system and use the proceeds to pay down the mortgage, Schlosser said.
Peachtree also made a $176.5M C-PACE loan in 2024 for the redevelopment of the 2,500-room Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
“For real estate that has less capital market liquidity, this is a fantastic product,” Schlosser said.
