The world continues to sort through the partial release of three million plus pages of the Epstein files, looking for who is connected to what and when and why. Culver City apparently narrowly escaped being dragged into the mess.
Correspondence from the files shows that Jefferey Epstein considered purchasing Culver Studios in 2013, when the property was being offered.
On October 28, 2013, Epstein reached over to Barry Josephson, of Josephson Entertainment, asking “culver studios are for sale. they said biz is pickeing (sic) up again. thoughts? it s 80 million.”
On Oct. 29, Josephson responded to Epstein saying “Culver City on the whole is really gaining steam commercial and residential. When the new train system that connects culver city to the beach, valley, and inland empire is finished in 16 months…that’s going to be the clincher I think for that very desirable hood. There have recently been a lot of article written about the growth of the area.”
Michael Gargano, seemingly a broker doing research on the deal, sent an email saying “Just had a long conversation with the lead broker at Eastdil. Regarding debt financing, he surprised me – he said that he expects all the bids will be contingent on debt so he is ok if ours is as well but the contingency should be in the 30 day range. He pushed on price and said he thinks the final round bidders will come in around $85M. I told him that sounds like a stretch but I look forward to the tour on Thurs and better understanding the current and future cash flow and the development potential. He was surprisingly unable to articulate the status of the entitlements the current owner is supposedly pursuing for an additional 107,000 sf. He said he would have to get back to me on that.”
The idea was to purchase the studios, then lease them to Fox. “The plan would be to gradually convert occupancy to long term arrangements with Fox or other entertainment/tech firms, which will mitigate the operational risks and also allow us to lock in long term debt at lower rates. If we can reach agreement with Lehman to buy the property, we would start the discussions with Fox immediately.”
Epstein replied “let me think about it, it seems more prone to operational diffictulties (sic) than real estate.”
While Epstein considered $85 million to be a high price, the sale went to Raleigh Studios/Hackman Capital for $90.5 million.
In the end, Culver City unknowingly avoided being connected with one of the biggest scandals ever uncovered.
Judith Matin-Straw
Editors note – Annotations of (sic) means ‘spelling is correct,’ this is how it was spelled in the original correspondence.
