Great Point Studios LLC, the builder and manager of the Lionsgate Studio campus on Wells Avenue in downtown Yonkers, is planning to build a second studio campus in the city, the Business Journal learned during a studio visit and interview with Great Point’s CEO Robert Halmi.
The Business Journal met with Halmi and toured the three new soundstages now ready for filming to begin at Lionsgate. Two of the stages are 20,0000 square feet, while the third is 10,000 square feet.
The Business Journal reported last March that Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano was expecting that at least one and possibly two additional movie studios would be developed in the city.
Great Point has already announced they are expanding the Wells Avenue Lionsgate campus at National Resources”™ iPark Hudson by adding seven additional 20,000-square-foot soundstages and one additional 10,000-square-foot stage. Additional production facilities and office space also will be created. Approximtely 10 acres of adjacent land have been acquired for the expansion.
The second location is being planned for the Rising Ground campus, formerly known as Leake & Watts, at 463 Hawthorne Ave. overlooking the Hudson River. It would have an additional 10 or 12 soundstages and support facilities, according to Halmi.
“This will be … really the mini-Hollywood of the Northeast, Yonkers, right here. We’re going to build this first campus with 11 soundstages, we’re going to add a campus down the street … and we’ll have the largest film and television facility in the Northeast,” Halmi said. “We’ve had no problem leasing our stages. We’re 92% leased in phase one.”
Halmi said that he could not immediately accommodate five feature films that wanted to begin shooting at Lionsgate and hopes to have additional soundstages available sooner rather than later.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony and celebration that had been planned to take place on Liosgate”™s opening day of Jan. 11 in 20,000-square-foot Stage A was canceled due to the surge in Covid cases. However, Lionsgate’s first production at the new campus, the second season of the TV series “Run the World,” was set to begin its move-in as planned on opening day. The studio has protocols in place to deal with the threat from Covid and allow production activity to take place.
Specifications for the campus at the iPark site include parking for 600 cars and 100 trucks. It will have the capability for originating live TV broadcasts as well as recording them. Camera, lighting and stagehand equipment will be available on-site, along with a collection of props and fully-equipped carpentry areas for building sets. There will be dressing rooms for actors, on-site restaurants and a concierge service for people working at the site. There also will be capability to support production crews filming on location in Westchester and nearby areas.
“Yonkers is the perfect place for a movie studio,” Halmi said. “It’s very close to Midtown Manhattan. We’re right at the train station. It’s 25 minutes away from Grand Central station. It’s within all the union zones so unions can come to work here as if they’re showing up in Midtown Manhattan without any penalty to the filmmakers.”
Lionsgate, which obtained naming rights for the production center, currently is headquarted in Santa Monica, California. In addition to producing and distributing motion pictures and TV shows, it owns the cable network Starz. Its film and TV library includes approximately 17,000 titles. Its top films include “The Hunger Games, “John Wick,” “La La Land” and “Rambo.”
When will construction/demolition begin on the Hawthorne Ave. parcel? I can see my house your the above photo, so we’ll be affected by the noise of the new owners.