Toronto is just 18 months away from opening part of its first new megastudio if everything goes according to plan for Toronto Film Studios and The Rose Corporation, the tag team of companies now set to build and operate a multistage lot on the city’s waterfront, a long-delayed and contentious project that promises to breathe new life into the local movie business.

‘This is not simply a studio but a film/media village that will bring together the entire film community,’ says TFS president Ken Ferguson. ‘It’s the economic engine the city has been looking for in the port area.’

The site will seek to attract the biggest-budget shoots, at more than US$50 million, that have recently drifted to the Czech Republic, Australia and other regions in Canada.

Plans unveiled on June 30 include a giant 45,000-square-foot soundstage – purpose-built for high-budget sets – and several smaller stages, ranging in size from 12,000 to 30,000 square feet, plus a half-million square feet of office space, fitted tightly onto a 30-acre site in the city’s underused east end, all of which will cost about $175 million.

Rose is putting up a ‘sizeable’ chunk of equity to pay for the build, says Ferguson, and will bankroll the rest through conventional construction debt. The companies have asked for a 99-year lease on the land, but are still in negotiations with the city.

The first stages, perhaps six, including the big one, are set to open by early 2006, following a construction start later this year. Full construction will take five years. Next door to Portlands is Toronto’s other megastudio, Great Lakes Studios, now under construction and set to open sometime in 2005.

The big stage will be one of the largest in Canada – TFS runs a 24,000-square-foot space, Mel’s Cite du Cinema has one that’s 36,000 square feet – and on par with the famed ‘007’ stage at Pinewood & Shepperton Studios in the U.K., the gold standard against which Toronto’s efforts have been measured.

Ferguson says the surrounding neighborhood will be redeveloped for film-related commercial space and public parkland, in keeping with the city’s broader plans to draw tourists and to revitalize the waterfront. The city will eventually add streetcar lines and extend the area’s main thoroughfare, the Don Roadway.

‘The film action will spill out of the gates a little bit, so you get some public interest and excitement,’ he says, pointing to the lot’s shoreline. ‘You could bring a ship or a submarine right up to the dock wall and use that as a film set.’

The Portlands project, as it is commonly known, has moved slowly since the idea was first unveiled two years ago – stalling as tenants and partners backed out. The city and TEDCO, its economic development arm, spent most of the past year caught up in the lengthy process of auditioning new development partners, eventually paring the list down to TFS, which already runs 360,000 square feet of studio space around Toronto, and its parent company Rose.

Calls for the construction of larger studios in the city began in 2000, following a study by the Ontario Film Development Corporation (now the Ontario Media Development Corporation) that blamed lack of adequate space as the single biggest obstacle to Toronto’s service industry.

Opponents of both builds have argued Toronto could not support two competing megastudios, although Portlands and Great Lakes recently retooled their plans for more long-term cooperation.

Now, Ferguson believes the project will finally take off. ‘It’s been very frustrating for us,’ he says, but ‘we’re over those humps and now you’re going to see some action.’