Plans to make Toronto home to two of the largest soundstages on record are moving forward. The $100-million Studios of America is in the early stages of construction on the site of the former R.L. Hearn Power House, hoping to be open for business by the end of 2003, and Pinewood Shoot City Studios is planning to complete negotiations with the city to greenlight the development of its $150-million-plus facility at Toronto’s portlands by early fall.

Investors and the city believe both facilities will keep Toronto from losing an estimated $500 million annually in Hollywood production dollars to Vancouver and Montreal. According to an Ontario Media Development Corporation report released in 2000, Toronto, unlike its counterparts, lacks studios that are both large enough and properly rigged to accommodate blockbuster F/X-driven U.S. projects. But the production frenzy the city saw a couple of years ago has yet to be duplicated, so whether there will be enough business to keep both new facilities as well as established Toronto studios humming remains to be seen.

‘I think it will be a stretch to keep both studios busy,’ admits Paul Vaughan, CEO of SOA, a limited partnership among Canadian, American and European investment and industry interests.

He is confident the future SOA facility will attract big-budget productions, citing among other advantages the old power plant’s unique physical location, like an unobstructed horizon across Lake Ontario, as well as the building’s original infrastructure, including its old-fashioned boiler room.

But the site’s biggest draw is the potential for a massive soundstage, which Vaughn says has piqued the interest of potential clients like Paramount, which has already scouted the site.

‘We don’t want to compete with the people on Eastern Avenue [such as Toronto Film Studios], we want to add to the critical mass of the upper end.’

Peter Lukas, president of Toronto’s Showline, says he is not opposed to either SOA or PSCS. ‘I don’t think there is any question that they will be direct competitors, but I don’t mind competition,’ he says, ‘as long as that playing field is kept level.’

Lukas says his attitude will be less accommodating, however, if it becomes apparent that the new studios have benefited from any form of government funding that was not made available to existing studio operators.

Negotiations to begin building PSCS have been ongoing since February. Key to these negotiations is determining the terms of the land lease, which would be granted to Sequence Development Group, a San Diego-based real estate developer made up of partners Steven Black and Roger Birks of California, as well as Canadian Julius Gombos. U.K.-based Pinewood Studios and Shoot City, composed of Torontonians Steven Lewis, Edward Bowman and Greg Copeland, will have operational rather than developmental interest in the facility, although they do have a minority equity interest.

Allan Andrews, consultant on the PSCS project and president and CEO of the Toronto Economic Development Corporation when negotiations began, remains optimistic in the face of lower production volumes and competition from SOA. He says that a falloff in the type of business that has been coming to Toronto in the past is not a concern because PSCS is targeting a different market. The new studio aims to attract $150-million-plus productions, which Toronto has been unable to attract so far.

Andrews points to Pinewood’s drawing power and experience in the industry as strengths of PSCS. Pinewood’s 60 year-old facility in England has housed classic movies from David Lean’s Oliver Twist to the James Bond series.

‘[Pinewood] perceives it as a business imperative to have a North American location and perceives this as an adjunct to their operation in the U.K.,’ he says.

Andrews confirms that Alliance Atlantis won’t be playing as big a role in PSCS as initially perceived, but he says, ‘The project will go forward with or without [AAC].’