North America’s largest purpose-built soundstage is finally open for business at Filmport.

‘It’s finished today, Feb. 10,’ declared president Ken Ferguson during an open house at the Toronto studio complex on Tuesday.

The ‘mega-stage’ (stage 4) is one of seven operating soundstages at Filmport. The other six were officially opened on Aug. 20, 2008. And although Ferguson conceded that his studio’s crown jewel does not yet have a tenant, he said the phone has been ringing since it was announced last week that New York state’s tax-credit funding for film shoots had dried up.

No immediate competition from New York is ‘100% good news’ for both Filmport and Ontario, said Ferguson. ‘We already have two [TV] pilots this year that New York would have gotten,’ he said, ‘one from Disney and one from Fox. It’s absolutely going to make a difference.’ The pilots are shooting on Filmport’s smaller stages. Recent bookings also include Universal’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Atom Egoyan’s Chloe.

At an economic conference in New York on Monday, NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker said he didn’t expect the studio to do any filming in New York this year unless the tax-incentive program received new funding. New York will table a new budget on April 1, though state legislators are staring at a US$13-billion deficit.

Sources indicate that some 10 to 15 feature films may land in Ontario or Quebec because of the loss of the New York tax break.

Ferguson said the New York program played a role in making 2008 ‘the worst year we’ve had in film and TV… in at least the last 15 years,’ although he sees light at the end of the tunnel.

‘There were three things working against us last year,’ Ferguson explained. ‘There was the high [Canadian] dollar; the [Writers Guild of America] labor strife and big U.S. tax breaks. We figured the labor problem would solve itself, but we realized we couldn’t do anything about the other two.’

Ferguson noted that the 49,500-square-foot mega-stage is so big that ‘the Parthenon would fit in here, height and everything.’ The ceiling is a whopping 60 feet high, making humans look as tiny as ants from the studio’s catwalk. It occupies 3.5 million cubic feet of space, and its volume clearly impressed all in attendance, despite some fine dust still lingering in the air from last-minute finishing touches.