After 19 years owning and operating The Bridge Studios, the B.C. government has sold Vancouver’s venerable first film studio for $40 million to West Vancouver-based Larco Investments.

‘Private industry is best equipped to maintain and operate production facilities of the level and expertise of Bridge Studios,’ said Stan Hagen, tourism, sports and arts minister, in a release.

The B.C. Pavilion Corp. (PavCo), a Crown corporation, ran the movie studio since the late 1980s, in an effort to support the fledgling B.C. film industry, which has since become a major production locale for Hollywood and Canadian productions.

‘We received direction last July from the government requesting we sell,’ says John Harding, COO of PavCo. ‘When we first started, our objective was to build the industry. We are going to focus now on our core business — running the convention facilities and BC Place.’

The six-hectare, six-stage Burnaby studio has hosted more than 100 productions, including the long-running TV series MacGyver, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, and feature films Final Destination 3 and Fantastic Four. According to the B.C. Film Commission, the industry infrastructure has grown to encompass more than 500,000 square feet of production space.

Larco, a B.C.-based company, owns and operates retail centers, hotels and convention facilities across Canada. It is owned by the Lalji family, which, according to reports, was among many driven out of Uganda in the 1970s under dictator Idi Amin. The Larcos landed in Vancouver and established themselves as major property developers in the Lower Mainland.

‘We are an investment company and we fell in love with the business,’ Larco VP Jim Nesbitt tells Playback Daily, in the company’s first public comment since the transaction. ‘We spent three months of due diligence researching the business and realized that the industry has turned into a viable business with a long-term future.’

He adds that The Bridge has outstanding tenants such as MGM.

Larco will continue to operate The Bridge as film studios and keep on the five full-time employees.