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With soundstage space in New York at a premium, and with the local film industry holding steady after years of growth, last year's announcements of several proposed soundstages in both New York and New Jersey were met with a good deal of enthusiasm-as well as some sober skepticism.

As reported in SHOOT's New York Production issue last summer (SHOOT, 6/5/98, p. 55), these soundstage projects, including New York Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Hudson River Studios on Manhattan's west side and Silk City Studios in Paterson, N.J., have been hyped as the second coming in the local film, TV and spot production world.

The most ambitious project has been The Shooting Gallery's plan for the 30-acre Supor Industrial Park, in Harrison, N.J., which was announced with great fanfare in The New York Times last January. The proposed site has included, at different times, a compound of 15 soundstages, a gym, day-care facilities and a hotel-like concierge service, among other attractions.

So where do the grand plans stand today?

"Forget it," says Joe Friedman, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, who once had high hopes for the center. "It's been going on for a year now, and unfortunately their grandiose plans have not materialized." Nor, he says, have soundstage plans been realized by Edison Properties, which had been eyeing another location in Harrison, also owned by Supor.

The problem with the New York-based production house's project, Friedman adds, is simple: "It's a matter of money. It's so expensive to even get up and running. ... There were good ideas, some money was spent [by The Shooting Gallery], architects and designers, that kind of thing, and the state agreed that it would help any way it could - up to a point - such as providing help in terms of transportation, labor and other things the Department of Commerce offers when any company is considering moving or relocating into New Jersey. ... But the problem is, it's one of those things that you can't guarantee a steady stream of business. It's touch and go in the film business." This, he adds, despite the fact that everybody knows "there is a huge, critical shortage of space in the metropolitan area."

The Shooting Gallery is still looking for soundstage space, with a scaled-back version of the Harrison facility not yet ruled out, according to Craig Bankey, VP of publicity for The Shooting Gallery and its Gun For Hire Films division. "We've opened the search for stages in both New York and New Jersey," he explains, and are hoping to settle on 250,000 square feet for 10-12 stages.

If the soundstages do indeed get built in New York, The Shooting Gallery will once again be assisted by the New York City Investment Fund, established in 1996 by financier Henry Kravis to help spur business growth. The Fund has already invested $2.5 million into the company, financing half of a $5 million renovation of Gun For Hire Studios at Brooklyn Navy Yard. Films' production services facility on Leroy Street and its soon-to-open facility on Greenwich Street, both in downtown Manhattan. (The Leroy Street location also houses East Coast Post and Clear Music, and is primarily used by feature film productions.)

According to Kathryn Wylde, president/CEO of the New York City Investment Fund, Gun For Hire Films' facility "was needed in the city." She adds that the busy Leroy Street operation has shown that Gun For Hire has "a track record as a line production service. They've shown that the business model worked in terms of there clearly being folks who will come in and pay for office space and line production services under one roof."

As for the soundstage search, Wylde adds, "We're involved in it and are trying to ensure that they're on this side of the Hudson River. It's not easy to find space, but we're exploring with them as many possibilities as we can."

Last Exit To Brooklyn

The other high-profile project, also announced with bold headlines in The Times, is New York Studios, which is planned for the Brooklyn Navy Yard and geared toward feature films, episodic TV and spotwork. With its cavernous buildings, vast parking space and East River locale, directly across from downtown Manhattan, the Navy Yard is a prize chunk of real estate. Cary Dean Hart, president/co-founding partner, and Louis Madigan, CEO/co-founding partner, envision a 15-acre "production factory" featuring a 48,000-square-foot soundstage, 10 additional stages and support services. Hart and Madigan signed a 70-year lease with the Navy Yard contingent on their raising $190 million (since scaled back to $140 million) in development costs by the end of 1998 (SHOOT, 7/3/98, p. 1), a deadline they said was recently extended six months. Hart, who owns stage set-design firm Delphi Studios, and Madigan, owner of Progressive Internet Alternatives, both of which are housed at the Navy Yard, put together a development team that includes J.P. Morgan & Co., Harbison-Company-Financial Advisors, LaSalle Partners Development, HLW International and J.A. Jones-GMO. The team has yet to announce raising of any capital.

Hart and Madigan are organized, tenacious, passionate - but they are reluctant to supply information substantiating claims that they plan to break ground in 1999. Perhaps the most ominous sign that they are treading water is the extension of the December deadline, as well as the fact that numerous calls from SHOOT to both Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's office and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation - which is working with the city to spur the site's growth - were not returned. A series of announcements have been promised for the beginning of '99, including one from a company that will manage the facility, rumored to be Sony Pictures Entertainment. Hart says the as-yet-unnamed managing company has, in fact, been signed.

Mike Harbison, CFO of the New York Studios and president of Sarasota, N.Y.-based Harbison Company - corporate advisors on strategy and finance for the studio project - claims that the deal is "99.9 percent done. The city, the Brooklyn Navy Yard in particular, has been unbelievably helpful." The plans, he adds, "are conservative, and investors believe in our numbers."

While it's been reported that New York Studios believes its ancillary production support services can help the facility turn a profit, Hal G. Rosenbluth, president of Kaufman Astoria Studios, Astoria, Queens, cautions that, while he believes in ancillaries, "There's a cost to them. ... For example, you have to pay for the technology, the personnel. They all have their own cost base. So you need to look at these things from a worst-case scenario, which is: No one's using the stage, and I have to pay these services, plus overhead for the stage itself."

Silk City Studios was announced last spring by co-developers Tanya Ryno, a TV producer, and Bice Grobstein, CFO of MB&L Real Estate, Paterson, N.J. Ryno says the original plan, for a 30,000-square-foot stage to be built in a Paterson warehouse, is on hold.

The project, she says "is kind of waiting on me. I'm in the middle of a few things, but MB&L wants to work on it as soon as possible."

According to Ryno, "We had gone ahead and had prints drawn up and had an architect and studio designer come into the building in Paterson, but people approached us [with other ideas], so we're still looking into things." The sites they're researching, she adds, are all within 30 minutes of Manhattan, and are also owned by MB&L.

Ryno says Silk City will focus on spots and music videos and that the stage will be designed so it can be divided up to accommodate smaller productions. The Silk City business proposal calls for an initial cash investment of $3 million. The project, says Ryno, "is looking for some backing."

The project that appears most likely to happen is the Hudson River Studios, a reported $120 million, 315,000-square-foot, five-soundstage space to be constructed atop the St. John's Terminal in downtown Manhattan. Phone calls to Hudson River's public relations firm were not returned, but it has been reported that the facility will be primarily an episodic television studio and has a crucial commitment from Procter & Gamble, which apparently will utilize three of the five studios for several of its long-running soap operas.

Gotham Backlots?

The question remains whether or not production in the city can support a full-blown soundstage facility akin to a Hollywood backlot. While a final 1998 tally of production dollars generated in New York is not yet available, Julianne Cho, director of publicity for the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, projects that the numbers are on par with last year's total of $2.37 billion.