As recently as four months ago, Toronto was being criticized as a barren wasteland in terms of mega-studio space – a place to eschew if you’re making $50-million-plus Hollywood productions and looking for a clear-span, state-of-the-art soundstage.

But at the current rate of new plan unveilings, the lament may soon be a distant memory.

Still, questions linger about the viability of two recently proposed mega-studios, not the least of which is whether they will get off the ground at all.

On April 4, the government of Ontario announced it will lease 350,000 square feet of the former R.L. Hearn Power House on Toronto’s portlands to a new studio consortium.

The new $100-million facility, being developed by a limited partnership calling itself Studios of America, will tentatively consist of five to 10 soundstages, including one 80,000-square-foot, clear-span space, likely the largest of its kind in the world.

The announcement follows on the heels of a plan to build a new $150-million, one-million-square-foot facility on Toronto’s docklands in partnership with U.K.-based studio operator Pinewood Shepperton. When it was unveiled in February, Pinewood was itself supposed to hold the world’s largest soundstage at 50,000 square feet.

Like Pinewood, the SOA development was born out of a 2000 Ontario Media Development Corporation study calling for more and better studio space in Toronto as a means to help stem the flow of big-budget productions to Montreal and Vancouver.

Ontario has lost $100 million, annually, in production to other provinces like Quebec and B.C. because of a lack of large studio space, according to some estimates.

‘We’re focusing on the large studio complex, which is where Toronto is losing a very significant amount of business,’ says SOA CEO Paul Vaughan, a financier whose expertise is putting together limited partnerships.

Vaughan declined to give names of investors, other than to say the bid was made up of local and foreign interests, which he described as ‘brand names’ that the production community ‘will be very pleased with.’

The group continues to sell shares in the development and has been in discussions with at least one major Toronto studio owner plus representatives from Comweb, part of the consortium that lost to Pinewood in February.

While the financial model for SOA differs from that of Pinewood, which has a small group of core investors and will depend more on tenancy agreements, one of the heads of the Pinewood venture says the new project could hamper both in their abilities to generate start-up revenues.

‘If you try to start up two [projects] simultaneously it can compromise financing for both,’ says Julius Gombos, partner with Sequence Development Group, part of the Pinewood consortium.

Gombos says Pinewood will nevertheless move ahead with its plans, which are currently in the lease-negotiation stage and awaiting two more tenant agreements.

While the two studios are still in the financing stage, yet another project is nearing completion.

Danforth Studios principals Daniel D’Or and Philip Jackson, along with partners Tony De’Pasquale, Richard Sniderman and Fred Posner, are just months away from completing construction on the Greystone Studios space in Mississauga, ON.

Located on 10 acres of land, the 157,000-square-foot studio will house Danforth’s second and third seasons of Starhunter for CHUM Television (44 one-hour episodes to start shooting in June), as well as at least two other major feature films and/or series at any given time.

‘We couldn’t find anything this big downtown,’ says D’Or, who remembers a time when he’d have to rent crummy warehouses that didn’t have bathrooms and were never big enough, and spend exorbitant amounts of money setting them up, only to leave all the work behind when production was completed.

Building a studio (which is costing the Greystone team under $10 million for construction) ‘is not necessarily a real profitable venture, but there generally hasn’t been enough to fill the demand,’ says D’Or.

All this action has outgoing OMDC president Adam Ostry seeing a potentially bright future for Ontario production, because the mega-studio proposals will bring sophisticated effects-driven production to town.

‘Anything that will attract production in niches that we are not competitive in at the moment is good for the overall growth of the industry and is good for Ontario’s competitiveness in North America and the world,’ he says.

The mega-studios will have the effect of attracting major U.S. production; expanding Ontario’s crew base; relieving pressure on the smaller studios, opening space for smaller producers to access studio space; and providing greater opportunities for graduating students in the business.

Still, Ken Ferguson, president of Toronto Film Studios, sounds a note of caution. He says major projects such as Pinewood and SOA could cost more than anticipated, which in turn could send studio bosses back to the government asking for a better deal on their leases. ‘The possibility is there that they’ll look at the economics and not be able to pull it off,’ he says.

This might force either the city or province to subsidize the project. And that would be unconscionable to established studio owners.

‘It’s unfortunate because there are a number of studio owners who have been working hard and have made this business what it is today, and we are not getting any help from our elected officials. In fact, it feels like we’re being undermined by our elected officials,’ he says.

That said, Ferguson believes that the more studio space there is the better for the city as a whole. Providing that all are playing on a level field.

‘We’ve definitely seen that in Vancouver,’ he says. ‘I think the main thing that has happened in Vancouver is they built a lot of studios and therefore they can handle a lot of business. So I think more studios in Toronto will drive more business to Toronto.’

This in turn could impact other production centres including Vancouver and, particularly, Montreal.

Lindsay Allen, acting director at the B.C. Film Commission, doesn’t expect too much production to be drawn from Vancouver because most productions go there for the locations and, in the case of Hollywood shoots, the proximity.

But the reality could be different in Montreal, he says.

‘I would expect there is more active transfer between Toronto and Montreal. If you come west to Vancouver you’re very much in a different location.’

But Benoit Hogue, executive VP at Moliflex-White, owner of Cine-Cite Montreal and Ice Storm Studios, feels Montreal can stand its ground.

‘If it’s a production only looking for stages, of course we’ll compete, we’ll go nose to nose. But most productions are location driven,’ he says. ‘We will not see a huge shift in business. We’re not nervous.’

That said, should either B.C. or Montreal feel a pull of productions, both Hogue and Allen expect local studio owners to respond.

‘It’s a nice draw. It’s nice to be able to say we have the biggest effects stage,’ says Allen. ‘No question, it’s a very effective marketing tool.’