There”™s been a lot of talk about the creative class and how to bring more tech-savvy, highly skilled artistic workers to the urban enclaves of the Hudson Valley.
Enough talk: In a plain, red-brick building in Kingston”™s midtown, it”™s already happening.
The Seven 21 Media Center is a place where video and film producers, Web developers, an internationally famous rock band, audio post-production people, sound engineers, animators and a fashion designer have set up shop and are collaborating. They are exchanging ideas and services, providing moral and technical support and even referring each other to clients, which collectively represent an impressive roster of  brands, performers and regional institutions. The facility is also doing a brisk business with TV, film and audio producers from New York City who relish having access to high-tech studios and available state-of-the-art equipment near their weekend houses.
The phenomenon is percolating right there on Broadway, across the street from Eng”™s Chinese restaurant and plumbing supplier D&J Distributors, defying cynics”™ pessimistic prognosis for the city. And Seven 21 happened without the aid of special studies by market research consultants, economic development grants or any kind of fanfare whatsoever. It”™s a pure mom-and-pop operation, driven by the business owners”™ needs.
“We haven”™t done a thing to promote it,” said CEO Jeremy Ellenbogen, who also is CEO and vice president of the Ellenbogen Group, a multimedia production company located in the building. The group is a family-owned business, with Jeremy”™s father, Henry, a veteran TV-radio broadcast engineer, serving as president and his mother, Alice, as office manager. The center grew out of the Ellenbogens”™ need to find more space for their growing business; it wasn”™t about getting a return on a real estate investment. “We”™ve gotten to know the business and we”™re renting out space,” said Jeremy. “It”™s like putting Miracle-Gro on a flower.”
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Even the basement is hot
Despite the lack of publicity, all but one room in the 30,000-square-foot, two-story space is rented out. There”™s a waiting list for the first floor and the demand is such that clients have already moved into office spaces in the basement, although renovations aren”™t yet completed. The tenants, who sign two-year leases and have access to a conference room, kitchen, bathrooms and reception area, get a 15 percent discount on the rental rates of the two media studios. Remote Digital Media (RDM), which besides producing its own videos, films and webcasts of live events, also rents out equipment. It is conveniently located next to the larger studio. The smaller studio is perfect for filmed and videotaped interviews. The leased facilities range from small offices and editing rooms to a large space for a T-shirt printing company to storage pods.
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When the Ellenbogens found out that Regional News Network, the previous owner, was moving its facilities elsewhere, they made an offer and ended up buying the building for $800,000. The family had outgrown its 5,000-square-foot building on nearby St. James Street. Jeremy was eager to find a space where he could have his own studio for shooting films and videos. He has since launched Toolbox, a business that produces woodworking video magazines, soon to be broadcast on the Web, made possible by the Seven 21 studio. The Ellenbogens obtained a low-interest loan for $200,000 from the city to facilitate the endeavor. Jeremy also obtained letters of intent from several media companies he knew were interested in renting out space, to help the family qualify for a mortgage. The Ellenbogens took possession of the building in March 2006.
The family has invested another $300,000 in renovations, including a new roof. Without the help of grants, they were forced to do much of the work themselves, renting out space as it was completed. They consulted with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority on ways to conserve power, installing energy-efficient heating and air conditioning systems and lighting.
An architect was hired for the basement renovation, strictly to ensure the work was within code; all the design work, including the selection of the vibrant colors on the walls, which create a spectrum of moods in the warren of rooms and corridors, was by Jeremy. Rotating artwork and photographs by area artists adorn the corridor walls. Currently, a large black-and-white photo of wooden water towers hangs opposite the Ellenbogen Group”™s entrance. Upstairs, a color close-up of a rust-encrusted truck enlivens a wall.
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Paying the rent
Once all the rooms in the basement are rented out, the Ellenbogens expect to meet their expenses, said Henry. The rents are reasonable by downstate standards ”“ from $20 to $22 a square foot ”“ but high for Kingston, although that seems to have had no effect on demand. The Ellenbogens also offer memberships for nontenants who want to utilize the facilities and various services, ranging from $100 a year to $100 a month, depending on the package.
To fill out the menu of services, Jeremy plans to construct a scene shop, which would complement the studios nicely. He also would like to attract a photographer, an artist and a grip company to the center. The most recent tenants are an entertainment lawyer and Webjogger, an Internet service provider from Tivoli. Webjogger will manage clients”™ interconnectivity with the Internet, including a service called “burstable bandwidth” that  enables huge video files to be sent much more quickly through the network.
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It”™s likely a portion of some film, video, commercial, CD or cartoon you”™ll encounter will have been made at Seven 21. National Geographic, which is filming a documentary on consumption at TechCity, leased one of Seven 21”™s studios for its casting call and also rented sound gear. RDM has done work for MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and many other nationally known clients. It”™s currently producing 10 concerts for a series of webcasts by McDonald”™s, with staff traveling to Venice Beach, Calif., Denver, and Chicago for the shoots.
RDM vice president Kevin Hartmann said a big benefit of Seven 21 is the accessibility of the studio space. In addition, “If we have a computer issue or software problems, we can talk to other people in the building and see if they have encountered the same problems and how they got around it. And Evolving Media (a fellow tenant) prints our T-shirts.”
A global warming cartoon by Mark Greene, an animator and video producer and editor who runs his design firm, Pecos Design, from an office in the center, is currently airing on Sierra Club”™s Web site. Greene, who shares the office with his wife, Sharon ”“ she does graphic-design work for textbook company Holt, Rinehart and Winston ”“ characterized the Seven 21 media center as “a spark plug for Kingston. We”™re creating a revenue stream from the other side of the continent.” He added that having access to high-quality audio facilities and other equipment helps him “produce higher-quality, more professionally developed” pieces.
On a recent whirlwind tour, even the unfinished basement was bustling with activity. Tod Levine and Ron Kuhnke, partners in K-Town Recording Studios, were putting the finishing touches on their two sound-mixing rooms. To eliminate every trace of an echo and hence meet the exacting standards required for film-audio effects, Kuhnke covered the walls of the two spaces with a rough-textured fabric and strips of wood arranged in various patterns. A curving wood piece punched with holes, resembling a giant piece of Swiss cheese, was suspended from each ceiling. Stepping inside one of these delicately outfitted rooms was like entering a handyman”™s version of a Japanese teahouse.
Both men had been working out of their homes, but the new space will greatly expand their capacity for post-audio sound effects, Kuhnke said. For example, rather than having to fly to Los Angeles to change a few lines of dialog in a film, an actor could record them remotely from the studio, which would be linked by computer to the California control room, said Kuhnke.
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Lily Pod Media
Across the hall, photographer Eric Anthony Johnson and digital artist Christine Baldelli were at their desks in a sea-green room cluttered with various types of printers and scanners. Their company, Lily Pod Media, designs promotional materials for small businesses in various media. On a loading dock at the back of the building, Jack Ryon, an engineer at RDM, had just returned from New Orleans and was loading equipment onto a truck for a run to the city. Upstairs, Geoffrey Baer, owner of Woodstock Films, was sitting before a glowing computer in his dimly lit office, strewn with small white Christmas tree lights. His projects include a series of yoga DVDs, independent films, music videos, book trailers, designed to run on Amazon and other book retailer Web sites, and a budding series of artists”™ DVDs.
Baer said being at Seven 21 had widened the scope of his business. “Here, your clients take you a bit more seriously,” he said. “We have all the resources at our fingertips to take any type of job at all.”
“Seven 21 has created an enterprise in which the sum is much stronger than the parts,” noted Kale Kaposhilin, director of operations and owner of Evolving Media, which besides printing T-shirts and other sundries, produces a variety of multimedia projects.
Kaposhilin said his company previously had to rent an enormous warehouse to house equipment that was only used occasionally. But since moving to Seven 21, it has saved money by leasing some of this equipment as needed. It also has access to more types of gear. For example, the company uses cabling from RDM. Before, it would have had to shell out $1,000 to rent a truck for a trip to the city to obtain the cable, plus purchase insurance, said Kaposhilin. “I couldn”™t be happier. I”™m paying the same or less in overhead, with better facilities. And you can”™t measure the cost in terms of the brain trust here.”
Seven 21 should be a model for the city, said animator Greene. More corporations are outsourcing their workers, partly to avoid paying expensive health-care insurance, he noted. “If this is indeed what”™s happening to American workers, then people who get ahead of this curve will create their own companies. Setting up Seven 21 is making the city friendly to entrepreneurs. It”™s filling empty space.”
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