Chicago is about to hitch the rising listing of cities the place new soundstage development will enhance the native leisure economic system. The Fields Studios – town’s first purpose-built and, so far, largest movie manufacturing complicated – will open within the first quarter of 2024.
Owned and developed by actual property agency Knickpoint Ventures, the brand new campus occupies the location of the previous warehouse and distribution middle for town’s legendary Marshall Field’s division retailer and its retailers throughout the U.S. It contains 9 soundstages on two tons totaling 132,000 sq. toes of stage area and over 350,000 sq. toes of artistic and manufacturing workplaces, plus mill and help area, on over 20 acres in Chicago’s Northwest Side.
“This project is another key landmark in our growing film and TV scene, which reached record revenue numbers in 2022,” mentioned Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. “We’re telling important stories… with union labor with an eye to ensuring historically disadvantaged Chicagoans are given an opportunity to get their start in the industry through workforce development programs designed to increase diversity.”
In March, Pritzker signed a 10-year extension of the state’s long-standing manufacturing tax credit score, which now covers some above-the-line prices. “This year I’ve committed another million dollars in our budget to expanding this important fund,” he added.
The new studio improvement is a part of an adaptive resuse of the previous Fields property, which additionally contains a mixture of retail, residences and workplace area,
Each manufacturing stage at The Fields Studios is predicted to create tons of of union jobs. At capability, the power ought to influence the native economic system by driving almost 12,000 production-related jobs with roughly $1.3 billion of financial influence in its first 5 years, per the builders.
Zain Koita, Founder and Managing Partner of Knickpoint Ventures, is assured the brand new studio will thrive regardless of the prevailing financial headwinds now confronted by the leisure business. “The economy as a whole is reorganizing itself, and entertainment industry is no different,” he says, including that the business’s current difficulties are “just a blip on the radar; we’re long-term oriented.”
Further, Koita believes, that movie manufacturing in Illinois is “underappreciated and underinvested” and that the state’s tax credit score “has gone largely unutilized because there are very few studios that are up and operating that can house major productions.” The new venture will fill that hole, he says.
Altogether, the Fields Studios will embrace 9 sound phases, eight NC-30 rated sound phases, starting from 12,000 to 18,000 sq. toes, plus a 5,000-square-foot stage for business shoots, music movies, and different smaller productions. This marks the most important mixture of soundstages in Chicago.
The studio campus may have roughly 150,000 sq. toes of help and mill area for surface-level base camp areas for manufacturing autos and help area for manufacturing departments, dressing rooms and surrounding land for future again lot development.