Historic Hollywood home of Eastman Kodak sold to developer

The historic former Hollywood home of Eastman Kodak Co. has been purchased by developers who plan to turn it into one of the city’s increasingly popular office sites for creative businesses.

The two-building complex on Santa Monica Boulevard at Las Palmas Avenue dates to the early days of the movie industry. In the late 1920s, Eastman Kodak scientists working there helped develop the company’s first film designed for sound motion pictures.

Lincoln Property Co., one of Southern California’s largest commercial landlords, bought the 100,000-square-foot complex for $24.5 million from Thompson National Properties of Irvine.

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Kodak sought Chapter 11 protection from creditors in January 2012 and has since vacated the Santa Monica Boulevard home it occupied for nearly a century.

The Hollywood business district that includes such movie and television studios as Paramount Pictures, Sunset Bronson Studios and Sunset Gower Studios, however, has been thriving, and there is a shortage of low-rise campus-style office space, Rob Kane of Lincoln said.

The Texas company plans to make about $5 million worth of renovations to the gated former Kodak compound in hopes of making it into a “mini studio” that another entertainment industry firm will want to rent.

“You can imagine a guy wanting to put his name over it,” Lincoln executive David Binswanger said.

Entertainment and technology firms are among the fastest-growing businesses in the region, real estate broker Kevin Shannon said, and they tend to locate on the Westside and in Hollywood.

“Santa Monica might by ground zero and quite hot, but Hollywood is right behind,” said Shannon, who helped arrange the sale. “It’s one of the niche places where these tenants like to congregate.”

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