A $5 million state grant approved Friday set in motion the purchase of the former Ryerson steel property that will be converted into the biggest state-of- the-art film studio outside of Hollywood.
Cinespace Chicago, located on 50 acres of prime city property on the Near Southwest Side, is now under construction and one 330,000-sq. ft. stage could be ready for action by January.
Cinespace Chicago owner, Nick Mirkopoulos, is a highly successful and respected Toronto studio owner, who will invest an estimated $80 million to convert the six contiguous buildings into a film and TV production center.
When completed in 12-15 months, Cinespace Chicago will create a projected 6,000 jobs.
"A big studio like this is long overdue," said John Coli, Sr., secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 727 and president of Teamsters Joint Council 25, who has worked tirelessly behind-the-scenes for several years in an effort to convince a major studio owner with a successful track record to establish a film complex in Chicago.
The Ryerson campus, as it is called, consists of 1.3 million sq. ft. of buildings under one roof, situated on 48.5 acres of land between Ogden and Western Avenues, a scant five miles southwest from State and Madison Streets in the Loop.
Mirkopoulos reportedly paid $18 million for the property. An asking price of $22-$26 million had been listed with an industrial real estate broker for the past 18 months.
Production business is expected almost immediately
After receiving news of the state grant approval Friday, Mirkopoulos on Monday flew his architect to Chicago to meet with contractors to immediately begin converting one of the property's six 572x572-sq. ft. buildings into a sound stage, which is expected to be completed within an estimated 60 days.
"They claim they will have business for the studio by then," said Coli.
Chicago will be an extremely attractive place to produce movies and TV shows, said Coli, thanks to unions that have committed to providing lower costs for filmmakers and Illinois' sustainable 30% tax credit.
"The unions are very flexible and have liberal work rules, which makes Chicago very user friendly," Coli said, which positions Illinois nose-to-nose with competitive film incentive states.
Most importantly, Coli added, studio business will have a tremendous, positive economic impact on the city, bringing new business to suppliers, hotels, restaurants and more.
Chicago's "trickle-down" economic impact from film production revenues has been estimated at 2.5% for many years; meaning, the city benefits 2.5 times from movie-related expenditures.
With a studio of this magnitude, coupled with Chicago's established infrastructure, crew and talent pool, Coli and Local 476 business manager Mark Hogan expressed confidence in a steady flow of visual media production here.
Nick Mirkopoulos has exceptional Hollywood connections that he has built over the 21 years he has been in the Toronto studio business.
