The studio lot where Seinfeld was filmed just went bankrupt and got handed over to Goldman Sachs.
Now David Spade is saying out loud what every working person in Hollywood already knows.
And the two men most responsible for this disaster don't want to talk about it.
Radford Studio Center Bankruptcy: The Hollywood Lot That Newsom Let Die
"I was on the lot at CBS Radford when we were doing Just Shoot Me," Spade said on his podcast Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey this week. "And also they were doing Seinfeld, and I'd see him on his bike. It was the greatest lot. Of course, just filed for bankruptcy, the lot. Terrifying in LA. Thanks, Karen Bass. Thanks, Gavin Newsom."
That's not a celebrity complaining – that's someone who was there when it was great, watching it get stripped for parts.
Radford Studio Center – formerly CBS Studio Center in Studio City – is one of the most storied pieces of ground in entertainment history.
Gunsmoke was made there. Gilligan's Island. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Seinfeld.
In January 2026, the owner, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage and handed the keys to Goldman Sachs.
The lot that once hummed with hundreds of cast and crew, that gave Studio City its name, that had its own replica New York street built for Seinfeld in 1994 – was generating revenue that covered just 21% of its annual debt payments.
Hollywood Jobs Have Been Leaving California Since 1997 and Democrats Never Stopped It
The runaway production crisis is not new.
Productions started leaving California in 1997 when Canada introduced aggressive tax credits and started poaching American film jobs.
Dozens of other states now offer production incentives. Georgia doesn't cap what it gives out. The UK has been luring blockbusters for years.
California's answer was a $100 million annual tax credit program so underfunded that studios had to enter a lottery just to apply – with no guarantee of winning.
Radford wasn't a surprise casualty. It was the predictable end result of three decades of California Democrats choosing high taxes and strangling regulations over the industries that built their state.
Newsom's office didn't respond when Fox News asked for comment on Spade's remarks.
Karen Bass's office put out a press release. She'd reduced some city filming fees and reopened a public building to camera crews. The lot where Seinfeld was made just collapsed under $1.1 billion in debt – and that's her answer.
Trump Named Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone to Save Hollywood and Democrats Still Did Nothing
When Trump took office in January 2025, he called Hollywood "a great but very troubled place" and appointed Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to begin rebuilding it.
Voight didn't hold back when he spoke to Variety last May.
"We can't let it go down the drain like Detroit," he said.
He's right. Detroit didn't collapse overnight – it collapsed through decades of bad governance and failed leadership until the factories were gone and they weren't coming back.
Trump also proposed 100% tariffs on movies filmed overseas – a signal that this administration understands what California's Democrats apparently don't: when you make it cheaper to produce American movies somewhere else, that's where American movies get made.
Carvey said it plainly on the same podcast: the Hollywood studio system is dying, and something has to be done.
California built the greatest entertainment industry the world has ever seen on geography, talent, infrastructure, and a business environment that made it worth being there. Democrats spent three decades dismantling all of it.
The Radford lot was appraised at $1.85 billion in 2021. Goldman Sachs is now trying to unload it for around $450 million – roughly a quarter of what it was worth five years ago.
David Spade rode past Jerry Seinfeld on a bike on that lot thirty years ago – back when the stages were full and the jobs were there and California was the only place on earth where this happened.
Goldman Sachs is now trying to unload the whole thing for $450 million.
Sources:
- Lori A. Bashian, "David Spade slams Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass over 'terrifying' Hollywood downfall," Fox News, March 21, 2026.
- "Radford Lot to Be Turned Over to Lenders After Hackman Defaults," Variety, January 15, 2026.
- "Radford Studio goes into foreclosure," Beverly Press, January 22, 2026.
- "Goldman Sachs Puts L.A.'s Radford Studio Center on Market," The Real Deal, February 24, 2026.
- Jon Voight, quoted in Variety, May 2025.
