“Our Job Is to Never Say No” — The Lot at Formosa Is West Hollywood’s Hottest Creative Incubator

The Lot at Formosa has been part of West Hollywood’s eastside since 1912. For most of that time it was one of the most storied production facilities in Hollywood. Now it has recast itself as something it has never quite been before. Not just a television and film studio but a creative media and entertainment campus.

“We like to think of ourselves as an incubator for creators,” said Markley Lumpkins, president of The Lot.

“Sounds big,” she said of the title. “But I lift like everybody else. We are small but we complement our clients’ needs with teamwork.”

Lumpkins started her career in real estate and facilities at Warner Bros. in 1992 — the same company that once owned The Lot. She moved through Boeing, then spent 22 years as Senior Vice President of real estate and facilities at Fox and News Corp, overseeing the Disney merger asset transition before joining CIM Group to run The Lot at Formosa in 2021. She is a USC graduate.

She’s using every bit of that experience to move a studio lot with more than a century of history forward.

“We’re ahead of most studios in pivoting, in this kind of incubator or hospitality accommodation, versus just calling ourselves a studio,” she said.

A Century of History

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks established Pickford-Fairbanks Studios on the property in 1919. Together with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, they founded United Artists Corporation and renamed the property United Artists Studio. Robin Hood (1922), The Gold Rush (1925), and Scarface (1932) were filmed there. Howard Hughes worked at the studio for nearly 50 years. Frank Sinatra recorded albums and filmed his television variety show on the lot. Samuel Goldwyn eventually took control, and the studio turned out Wuthering Heights (1939), Some Like It Hot (1959), and West Side Story (1961). Warner Bros. purchased the property in 1980 and renamed it Warner Hollywood Studios. The Love Boat and Dynasty were produced on its stages in the 1980s.

The complete production list spans more than a century. Gone with the Wind was filmed there in 1939. So was Stagecoach. The Best Years of Our Lives won Best Picture in 1946. The Apartment filmed there in 1960. Fiddler on the Roof in 1971. Apocalypse Now in 1974. Natural Born Killers in 1992. Seven in 1993. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1995. Game of Thrones shot there in 2013. So did Birdman. The Sympathizer filmed there in 2023. The Rehearsal in 2024. The full list runs to more than 300 titles.

In more recent decades the lot hosted Basic Instinct, L.A. Confidential, The Green Mile, and The Social Network. HBO signed a lease for all seven soundstages in 2021, producing Euphoria and Big Little Lies there before shifting operations back to Burbank in 2025. Miramax moved its headquarters to the campus in January 2025.

The campus holds seven Academy Awards and four Peabody Awards. Lumpkins said technical Oscars for sound were awarded to the facility, not to the individuals who performed the work. “That does tell you the importance of design, and the infrastructure of these buildings, and the quality of them,” she said. WEHOonline covered the lot’s deep Oscar history earlier this year.

The Eccentric Millionaire and His Garage

Most people walk past it every day without stopping. A garage on Santa Monica Boulevard, just east of Poinsettia Place, holds one of the most remarkable pieces of Hollywood history on the eastside. It has three peepholes in it. Look through any one of them and 1930s Hollywood looks back.

Howard Hughes worked at The Lot for nearly 50 years and kept a garage on the property. In 2018 the City of West Hollywood commissioned artist Michael C. McMillen to transform it into a public art installation. Inside sits a frozen recreation of a Pickfair Studios production office — a Royal typewriter buried under Western Union telegrams and crumpled paper, a rotary phone, an ashtray, film reels, camera equipment marked “Camera Dept. No. 14,” a monitor playing silent black-and-white footage, and a Stage 3 sign still on the wall.

The whole thing looks dark, dusty, and deliberately untouched. That is the point. Patina is the aged surface that develops on old materials over time. In an installation like this one, it is not dirt. It is the art. Lumpkins said when she first arrived her first instinct was to clean it up.

The Pivot

The shift at The Lot began as COVID ended. Lumpkins said they started expanding and looking at what else the campus could offer as the film and television market contracted and a writers strike loomed. “The nimbleness of ownership made change happen at the pace we needed,” Markley said. 

“We pivoted right after COVID, and with the strike impending that we anticipated, looking at what our new market could be doing with the lot,” she said. “We needed to create an opportunity for people in creative and media business to grow into different areas.”

The Lot now houses Miramax, advertising agency Anomaly, Gotham Group, Talent Systems, and Hartbeat. Dot Dash Meredith, which operates People, Entertainment Weekly, and Us Weekly, has offices on the campus. Buck Mason uses studio space. Ex Nihilo, a French luxury brand, runs marketing from the lot. Staut, a women’s fashion line, joins in June. Hasbro signed a long-term lease last week for more than 31,000 square feet, moving about 100 employees from Burbank to the campus in early 2027.

The campus’s sound history runs deep. The stages that became Warner Hollywood’s Goldwyn Sound Facility earned multiple Academy Award nominations and several Oscars for re-recording, scoring, ADR, and Foley work. The expansion for The Lot as well with 3013 Media, Steelheart, and Melrose Recording now on site.

Picture Shop, formerly the Formosa Group, converted its sound editing stages to picture editing and now offers both under one roof. An AI company known as Quilty recently joined, building a platform that runs scripts through algorithms to help evaluate them before they go to financing or casting.

The Lot’s expansion comes as West Hollywood’s entertainment landscape has been contracting. Quixote Studios, two blocks away at 1011 N. Fuller Ave., announced the closure of its West Hollywood soundstage in April after citing a prolonged slowdown in commercial, television, and film production. Parent company Hudson Pacific Properties had paid $360 million for Quixote in 2022. Its stages were running at 53 percent occupancy when it pulled out. The Lot at Formosa is moving in the opposite direction.

Bow Academy Arrives in August

In August, Bow Academy will take up residence on the lot. The organization is a renowned Irish screen actors guild. The Lot built out multiple classrooms for the group, which will run three sessions a day, five days a week.

Ireland has produced some of Hollywood’s most celebrated actors. Cillian Murphy won the Academy Award for Oppenheimer. Colin Farrell earned a Golden Globe for The Banshees of Inisherin. Saoirse Ronan has four Oscar nominations. Barry Keoghan, Paul Mescal, and Andrew Scott are among the most sought-after actors working today. Bow Academy trains the next generation of Irish screen performers. Starting this summer, they will do it in West Hollywood.

Talent Systems, described as the largest talent casting agency, operates on the campus. Its ground floor includes directorial casting rooms and smaller studios where actors can record their own reels. Lumpkins said she is confident the two tenants will benefit each other

The Mill

The oldest building on the lot, known as the the Mill, dates to 1912. For decades craftsmen there built the sets that became the movies — Greek palaces, Arabian mosques, and French villages constructed plank by plank for United Artists productions like Robin Hood and The Thief of Bagdad. The space is now being converted for special events, photo shoots, and concerts.

The wood construction gives it natural acoustics that Lumpkins said makes it one of the best spaces on the campus. The All-In Summit and Fashion Trust Awards have both been held at The Lot. The Motion Picture Television Fund held an event there for 1,500 people. Spotify held its 2026 New Artist of the Year event in The Mill itself, using it as the VIP lounge. The really cool thing — The Lot’s oldest building is hosting some of the hottest new IPs in the business.

Good Neighbors

The lot and the surrounding neighborhood have a working relationship. The campus sits inside a residential neighborhood, and Lumpkins said the relationship runs both ways. The Poinsettia parking structure keeps production trucks off neighborhood streets. Residents keep The Lot honest.

“We had a fellow call the other day and he said, ‘Your fans on top of that older building need oil, because I have a newborn and I can hear them,'” she said. “We took care of it then thanked our new maintenance checker.”

Office Space Available Now

They recently posted signage along Poinsettia Place advertising smaller offices and doubling down on incubation suites. Lumpkins said four deals came in within two weeks. Office spaces range from single private offices to larger furnished suites with private kitchens. Conference rooms are available by the day or week. Clients can expand as their needs grow or fulfill immediate short-term needs with screening and performance. 

Lumpkins runs The Lot the way a good hotel runs its property.

“We really do treat our tenants like a hotel,” she said. “What they need, we got it.”

Tenants arrive not always knowing what they’ll need in six months. Markley says The Lot fills those gaps, including operational ones that most modern companies no longer staff themselves.

“Even the larger tenants, because of downsizing and economies, lack the staff,” she said. “And so we take care of that for them — from labor, engineering, IT, security, and furnishing.”

“Our job is to never say no,” she said. “We have clients that need to have a hosted event for 40 people, once a month, with dinner. They don’t have a space where they can set up for dinner for 40. We make that space from what we have.”

The Lot hosts a regular tenant event, bringing the full campus together. The cross-pollination produces real business. Miramax hired one of The Lot’s on-site recording studios to handle ADR after the two tenants crossed paths on campus.

The never say no philosophy extends beyond The Lot’s tenants. During the January 2025 wildfires Lumpkins opened a soundstage as a community relief station. Volunteers prepared 2,000 emergency family hygiene kits that were distributed to displaced residents through Direct Relief. “We all know someone whose life was impacted by the wildfires,” she said.

The campus offers 24/7 security and two parking structures, one on Poinsettia Place and a second across the street, with visitor-pay options available.

The Lot at Formosa is located at 1041 N. Formosa Ave. in West Hollywood. Information on office and production space is available at info@thelotatformosa.com or call 323.850.3124.

The door has been open since 1912. Lumpkins intends to keep it that way by offering what the market needs as it evolves.