Echelon Studios Hollywood hit a big construction milestone Wednesday, as crews lifted the final steel beam into place atop the mixed-use studio campus rising at 5601 W. Santa Monica Boulevard. When finished, the project is set to blend soundstages, creative offices and street-level restaurants into more than half a million square feet of production and workspace.
As reported by Urbanise LA, workers marked the topping out with a beam-setting ceremony, and construction photographer Hunter Kerhart captured the on-site progress. The new complex fills an entire city block along Santa Monica Boulevard that once housed a shuttered Sears, now being remade as a walkable studio campus.
What the campus will contain
City of Los Angeles planning documents size the Echelon project at roughly 510,621 square feet. That includes about 109,957 square feet of production studios and related support space, approximately 388,286 square feet of creative offices, and 12,378 square feet of ground-floor restaurant space. The plans also call for two subterranean parking levels with room for about 981 vehicles. As detailed in City of Los Angeles planning documents, the massing steps down toward Virginia Avenue, adding terraces and bungalow-style suites along the edge to ease the transition into the surrounding neighbourhood.
Design and stages
Designed by RIOS, the campus is envisioned as a vertical studio lot that stacks soundstages, basecamp and bungalow-style creative suites to squeeze maximum use out of the five-acre site. As outlined by RIOS, the complex is organised around four 19,000-square-foot soundstages and a 15,000-square-foot flex stage, backed by an extensive basecamp and mill for production support.
BARDAS Investment Group and Bain Capital Real Estate are co-developing the property. The partners, whose joint venture launched in 2019, announced the groundbreaking in 2024 and described their ECHELON platform as a growing national portfolio that already includes more than 1.5 million square feet of content-creation space across Los Angeles. As announced by Bain Capital, the firms acquired the Hollywood site in 2021 and positioned Echelon as the first purpose-built urban studio lot in Hollywood in more than 50 years.
Why this matters now
City leaders and the development team argue Echelon is part of a broader effort to keep production anchored in Hollywood at a time when other regions are dangling aggressive incentives and building their own shiny new lots. In May, ECHELON and local officials hosted Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for a tour of the construction site, and the company press release on the visit stressed the campus' role in "keeping Hollywood in Hollywood," as reported by PR Newswire. Urbanize LA also noted prior trade coverage warning that softening local production could lead to a surplus of available stage space.
Developers are not entirely in sync on the finish line. Bain Capital's 2024 announcement projected completion in the second quarter of 2026, while the project page from BARDAS Investment Group lists delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026, suggesting that final build-outs and tenant move-ins could stretch into the fall. With the exterior now topped out, neighbors and industry watchers will be eyeing whether demand for modern, purpose-built studio space matches the new wave of supply.
