After several false starts, construction finally appears set to begin later this year on Toronto’s long-delayed film and TV ‘megastudio,’ now expected to open in late 2006 or early 2007.

‘It will go ahead, I can assure everyone,’ says Ken Ferguson, president of Toronto Film Studios, who is spearheading the new facility. He will soon sign a long-term lease for the complex with the Toronto Economic Development Corporation, the city agency that manages Toronto’s Port Lands.

Touted as Canada’s largest film and media facility, the proposed TFS megastudio aims to bring the kind of FX-heavy Hollywood movie shoots to Toronto that in recent years would have gone to Vancouver, Montreal or elsewhere internationally. Producers of these blockbusters have felt that Toronto did not have big enough purpose-built stages to accommodate large-scale action scenes.

In addition, the separate Great Lakes Studio consortium, which is retrofitting the former R.L. Hearn power station on Lake Ontario into a giant soundstage for major movie shoots, is nearing completion and already taking bookings, according to project partner Paul Bronfman, president and CEO of services conglomerate Comweb Group. Bronfman has partnered with Studios of America on the facility, slated to launch in spring 2006.

Subject to completion of financing and city council approval of the TEDCO lease deal, TFS looks set to begin construction on phase one of its megastudio, to comprise of 230,000 square feet of production space, including six major soundstages and one giant 45,000-square-foot stage. As market conditions warrant, TFS looks to expand to 550,000 square feet of production space, with additional commercial space for production equipment suppliers, post facilities, and union and guild offices.

But casting a pall on these developments is an emerging shakeout for rival studio operators, as the city begins rezoning and regenerating its waterfront.

TFS has secured a non-compete clause for its studio that prevents TEDCO from renting additional land to other studio operators for additional development in the derelict Port Lands.

‘[TFS has] the right to develop the land, and others will not have the right to develop those lands,’ says TEDCO president and CEO Jeffrey Steiner.

In addition, existing production service companies and studio facilities stand to be relocated or evicted – but for reasons other than the TFS megastudio, Steiner insists.

Rather, studio facilities and support companies such as Absolute Locations will need to relocate from their current locations, as Toronto starts removing brownfield sites and smokestacks to regenerate its waterfront with condominiums and green space.

And because film facilities are zoned ‘industrial’ – although they are nonpolluting – they will be caught up in the waterfront revitalization, Steiner says.

‘The whole waterfront is being rezoned for a mix of housing and parkland. The first eviction notices have already gone out,’ he adds.

TFS’ existing studio facility at 629 Eastern Avenue is also subject to rezoning to a combination of uses, mostly residential. The studio may be redeveloped after the new soundstage comes on stream.

‘We have committed to the film industry that we will not close any of the 629 studio lot before the new facilities are open,’ Ferguson says.

The potential loss of several existing soundstages to the waterfront revitalization has provoked both anger and resignation throughout the industry, some of which came to the fore at a recent stakeholder meeting at Toronto City Hall on June 20.

Steve Mirkopoulos, VP of Cinespace Film Studios, said that losing his four studios at the Marine Terminal at 175 Queens Quay down the road due to the waterfront rezoning has been compounded by TFS’ non-competition clause for the megastudio. The result is that Cinespace and rival studio operators cannot build new facilities in the Port Lands, while at the same time facing eviction elsewhere on the waterfront.

‘Losing the space that the film industry already uses is really the worst thing to happen,’ he said.

Also facing relocation or eviction is a 25,000-square-foot soundstage at 373 Front Street East owned by Grosso Jacobson Productions and the Showline Trinity Studios.

At the same time, Mirkopoulos says the pending release of TFS’ lease deal for its new studio should at least bring much-needed closure after years of sector uncertainty, during which bankers balked at financing new studio construction until they could gauge the impact of a new megastudio.

Both city officials and TEDCO are keen to treat the proposed megastudio and the waterfront rezoning and revitalization as separate issues. They argue that a giant new studio for Toronto is a market-maker, wooing the large-scale Hollywood shoots that have traditionally bypassed Toronto, rather than a market-taker draining tenants from older, existing studios.

‘The [new megastudio] will have a positive impact on the existing market. Everyone will benefit when the larger films come in,’ Steiner says.

Michael Booth, head of special projects in Toronto Mayor David Miller’s office, offers no comment on the TFS-TEDCO negotiations at ‘this very sensitive stage,’ but does indicate general support for the Port Lands studio concept.

The current progress towards a long-term lease deal for the megastudio and the refurbishing of the R.L. Hearn Power House is all the more significant because rosy hopes have been dashed before. Since the early 1990s, Toronto has competed primarily on the economic advantage of tax credits and the exchange rate, combined with the city’s support infrastructure. Meanwhile, local and foreign producers have had to mostly settle on using converted warehouse space for soundstages.

But TEDCO’s Steiner is confident that Toronto will now finally get the megastudio many in the industry believe it so desperately needs.

‘All the practitioners in the industry articulate the need. The number of blockbuster movies is increasing, and the average budget of films is increasing, and the end-users are buying product. All are green lights for the future,’ he says.

-www.torontofilmstudios.com

-www.cinespace.com

-www.tedco.ca