Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has spent the past two years quietly assembling one of the most ambitious entertainment real estate plays in the country, and he is doing it not in Atlanta or Los Angeles but in Shreveport, Louisiana. What began as a handful of opportunistic buys has evolved into a sprawling portfolio of historic buildings, studio campuses and future venues that position him as a de facto land baron in a long overlooked Southern city. The strategy is simple but aggressive, tying dozens of properties to a single bet that film, television and live events can anchor a new economic engine in northwest Louisiana.
Instead of chasing already overheated coastal markets, Jackson is using relatively cheap downtown blocks, generous state tax credits and a cooperative city hall to build what he casts as a Southern entertainment hub. The scale of the plan, from a $124 Million studio complex to a growing list of downtown addresses, suggests this is less a side hustle and more a full pivot into being a regional power broker in bricks and mortar.
The making of a downtown land baron
The core of Jackson’s real estate story is volume. Local reporting describes him as owning “in the range of 20 properties” in Shreveport, a cluster that makes Cent one of the city’s largest private landlords and, by some accounts, its single biggest. Those holdings are concentrated in and around the compact downtown grid, where vacant office towers and underused warehouses can be bought for a fraction of big market prices, then repositioned as soundstages, production offices or housing tied to the entertainment workforce. The approach mirrors classic urban turnaround plays, but with a rapper turned producer at the center instead of a conventional developer.
Since May 2024, that buying spree has accelerated, with records showing that Since May Jackson has picked up a string of addresses across downtown Shreveport, Louisiana, including a key site at 610 M Texas Street that anchors one edge of the central business district. Analysts who track the deals argue that the value of this portfolio is not just in the buildings themselves but in the “sweat equity” that comes from clustering them, renovating about two dozen properties and tying them into a single entertainment ecosystem that can support production, hospitality and housing in one walkable core.
From ML Bath to the Gold Dome: assembling the pieces
One of the clearest examples of Jackson’s strategy is his purchase of the historic ML Bath building, a mid century structure on Texas Street that once housed a regional plumbing supply company. That property, now added to the G-Unit ownership rolls, was described as AnotherML Bath, is well suited for conversion into production offices or support space for nearby stages…