As the new year began, efforts were accelerating to make the southwestern section of Westchester a movie and TV studio megaplex. Recent activity included the sale of the property where a new studio campus is planned in Yonkers and a series of meetings on a proposed $100 million studio campus in Hastings-on-Hudson, the village, which is located just north of Yonkers along the Hudson River.
National Resources, based in Greenwich, and Great Point Studios helmed by Robert Halmi, which built the Lionsgate Studios in downtown Yonkers and currently expanding that facility, moved ahead with their plan to develop a new studio facility on the Rising Ground campus at 463 Hawthorne Ave. in Yonkers.
Also, according to the Manhattan-based firm Open Impact Real Estate, the nonprofit Rising Ground, which is the successor to the nonprofit Leake & Watts, sold its 28-acre campus on Hawthorne Avenue for $52.6 million to the movie studio developers with the closing taking place just before Christmas.
“Congratulations Rising Ground on this catalytic transaction. We are thrilled to partner with you on this impactful project and many more to come,” Open Impact personnel Stephen Powers, Lindsay Ornstein, Arthur Skelskie and Alexander Smith said in a message.
In addition to soundstages for movie and TV production, plans call for creation of a new Yonkers public school on the production campus that will offer media training to students.
National Resources, through the entity iPark Broadway LLC, has submitted plans for a third Yonkers production facility, which would be just below the Yonkers border with the village of Hastings-on-Hudson. It would be on a site that was purchased from RMC Development Company LLC. With a street address of 1050 N.Broadway, the project has been named North Broadway Studios.
As a follow-up to its plan for North Broadway Studios, iPark is asking Yonkers to approve the use of inflatable movie studios in the city, soundstages that are inflated using high-capacity fans. It has asked for approval of a test installation on Woodworth Avenue.
Just over the border with Hastings-on-Hudson and west of North Broadway is the site of another planned movie and TV production facility. Electric Owl Studios, based in Atlanta, has proposed constructing a $100 million movie and TV production facility with six soundstages on 20 acres of the Graham Windham Schools 24-acre campus at 1 S. Broadway. Graham Windham would retain four acres to be used for its continuing daytime programs.
Electric Owl Studios was co-founded by Michael Hahn and Dan Rosenfelt, both of whom are experienced in developing and operating movie and TV production facilities. Projects in which they”™ve been involved include a studio campus in Doraville, Georgia, that was opened in 2016 and sold in 2021 and a campus with six soundstages that is currently under construction by Electric Owl in Atlanta with a scheduled opening in 2023.
“Studios tend to exist in clusters, development clusters,” Hahn told the Business Journals. “Lionsgate and Great Point sort of broke the seal on making the suburbs north of New York City a known place for building, a place where people will be comfortable going. They know where Lionsgate is and they”™ll know where Electric Owl will be.”
Hahn said that he sees an on-going working relationship between Electric Owl and the movie studio operations in Yonkers.
“We”™ve reached out to the Lionsgate group. Dan Rosenfelt, who is our head of operations, has a relationship with them and we try to keep in touch with local studios,” Hahn said. “Local demand for studios is in excess of the supply at this point so studios are constantly keeping touch with each other based on availability. If we were full, let”™s say, and somebody called us looking for a stage base we”™d say, ”˜We don”™t have anything but Lionsgate may have some availability”™ or if we have a extra stage we may call Lionsgate and say, ”˜Hey, if you need any overflow we”™ve got an extra stage here.”™ So, we do tend to work together and because the demand is so great it”™s not as competitive as people would tend to think.”
Hahn said that since presenting its concept to the Hastings-on-Hudson Board of Trustees several weeks ago, Electric Owl has reached out to the community to get the input of residents, community groups and village departments such as fire and police.
“We felt it was important as a first order of business to sit down with various stakeholders. We”™ve probably conducted about 20 hours of meetings already. We took a lot of suggestions that they made with regards to traffic and aesthetics and we”™re trying to integrate some of those comments into our design,” Hahn said. “We”™ve always felt that the more communication you can have the better. We feel that the positives of the project are going to outweigh the negatives.”
One of the major positives Hahn emphasized was that the entire project would be designed to be environmentally friendly to the extent of being the greenest production studio in the world. He pointed out that the Electric Owl studio campus currently being built in Atlanta has numerous green and energy-saving features.
He said that the project would generate about $3 million a year in local taxes for Hastings-on-Hudson while not adding to the financial burden of the local school system. He added that Electric Owl is not seeking any tax breaks or incentives.
“It”™s a very art-oriented community and we”™ll have relationships with different artist groups and the schools,” Hahn said.
Hahn said that they have a contract to purchase the Graham Windham property and expect to be able to close sometime in 2023.
