After decades of losing out to such other places as Los Angeles, Vancouver and even Toronto, New York City is once again a major player in the film and television production industry. Just a decade ago, only nine TV series were filmed in the Big Apple. Last year, 23 were shot in the city – a record.
In fact, thanks in large part to a recently enacted tax credit and other incentives put in place by the state and city, 2012 stands to be another record year in terms of the number of films and TV series shot here.
Hal Rosenbluth, president of Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, gushed to Crain’s New York Business, “The New York industry outlook is huge. The unions are at full capacity, the stages are filled, and everybody’s very, very busy.”
“For the first time in years, New Yorkers in this business are now working 12 months a year,” said Douglas Steiner, chairman of Steiner Studios. “We need to train more people.”
All the studios that operate in New York City say the same thing and are looking to expand.
On Monday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose administration has gone out of its way to foster this boom, announced that Steiner Studios is opening five new sound stages in the former Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it already has had five busy sound stages for the past seven years.
At the press conference, the mayor said, “A little over a decade ago, New York City struggled to attract the lucrative production industry to film here. Now the city is such a popular and prosperous home to hundreds of films and television shows, we have to work hard to keep up with the demand for stages and production facilities.”
This remarkable turnabout brings a few things to mind.
The first is that in 2002, a group that included the actor and director Danny Aiello, citing the flight of TV and movie production from New York, set up shop at the former Navy home port in Stapleton. Stapleton Studios, it was called and the project had broad popular support on Staten Island, where it was seen as a linchpin of the economic revitalization of the Stapleton/Tompkinsville waterfront.
The studio would have fit in well with the ongoing residential/retail development in the area and would have given Stapleton a new cachet.
But for reasons that were never completely clear, Mayor Bloomberg’s Economic Development Corp. mounted a vendetta against the fledgling studio; after several years and bitter court battles, the EDC succeeded in driving Stapleton Studios out.
It was suspected that the Bloomberg administration wanted to choke off would-be competitors of the other studios that were struggling at the time. Obviously, as it has turned out, such protection was unnecessary.
Now, even 10 years after that mysterious purge, many Staten Islanders still lament the loss, especially when they look at how little the EDC managed to do with the home port property since then.
Mr. Aiello and company have moved on and the city has new plans for the former homeport site, so that’s water under the bridge.
But we do note that Crain’s reports that executives of Silvercup Studios, based in Long Island City “are scouring the entire city for more spaces that are large enough for sound stages.”
With their 18 stages in Queens already booked solid, they want to augment their capacity to handle TV and film productions.
And other studios are also on the lookout for additional space within the five boroughs to accommodate their booming business.
Alex Zablocki, the dynamic community activist and former candidate for public advocate, has what we think is an excellent suggestion for them: The former Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, which was excessed by the state late last year.
It has ample space to house any number of sound stages and support services, and it’s on a sprawling site with plenty of room for parking, storage and even outdoor sets.
What’s more, South and West Shore residents would welcome the environmentally friendly, low-impact film and TV production industry, as opposed to some of the other possible new uses we’ve heard for the facility.
It’s a perfect fit for the community and the studio would be an ideal neighbor. We commend Mr. Zablocki for his brilliant proposal.
Now, let’s see our elected officials and community leaders get behind this and make sure Silvercup and the other New York-based studios looking to expand have learned all about the former prison site before they make any decision on where to go.
