City looks to runners-up for film-studio proposals
The Toronto production facility that wanted to build a film studio at Bayview Yards wanted more space than the city was prepared to offer, an Ottawa city councillor said Wednesday.
Cinespace Film Studios dropped out of the running for a film and TV studio on the city-owned property on Bayview Road, north of Scott Street, after it could not come to terms with the city. The company which has more than 25 years’ experience in studio development, was selected in December as the winning bidder after Invest Ottawa issued a request for proposals.
The city was to contribute $1.5 million in capital through its arms-length economic development agency. Now that Cinespace has dropped out, Invest Ottawa is inviting the two other bidders to reapply.
“For the next few years, this area will primarily be a staging area for the LRT, and with Cinespace they wanted a bigger area to run their business properly and we couldn’t offer that,” said Councillor Katherine Hobbs, whose ward takes in Bayview Yards.
“If another applicant comes forward and can work with the limited amount of space we have there now, we would certainly consider that. Initially, they talked about having the whole property. I don’t know what happened in the negotiations, but we just can’t offer up the rest of that property.”
Cinespace founder Nick Mirkopoulos said a number of “handicaps” plagued the Bayview Yards site, and the size of the studio project was just one of them.
“We are working on a lot of other proposals and the Ottawa project was like a toy for me,” said Mirkopoulos in an interview.
“The Ottawa project had to be like 200,000 square feet maximum. The first phase of the project was like 80,000 square feet,” said Mirkopoulos, adding the size was too small to make it viable.
He said his recently built studio in Chicago has 70 acres and more than a million square feet of studio space and is attracting big-scale movie productions. He said the Ottawa studio had to be enticing enough to convince outside film producers to shoot there.
“Let’s face it. If Los Angeles (film producers) doesn’t come to Ottawa, it’s no business,” he said.
Mirkopoulos said other problems with the site persuaded him to drop out.
“Ottawa has a number of disadvantages, it is unknown to the industry, there is no depth of professional crews, and it needs to compete with more established locations which are subsidized in terms of tax credits and subsidized facilities,” the company said in a statement.
“We clearly indicated that to be successful, a studio in Ottawa would need to benefit from an excellent location, close to downtown hotels and amenities, and with convenient access to transportation for the crew, technicians, actors, extras, and with room for expansion. We would need the full co-operation of Invest Ottawa and the city. We were told by Invest Ottawa that the best site — the Bayview Yards — was not available to us because of a number of other city plans for the site.”
Mirkopoulos said he also disagreed with Invest Ottawa’s insistence that details of the project remain private, even though it was getting public money.
Blair Patacairk, a senior adviser with Invest Ottawa, said the agency couldn’t come to terms with Cinespace over the size of the studio project.
“What Cinespace was proposing for this site was quite large, but we needed a smaller-size studio. We couldn’t come together on the land availability and what wraps around that for the Bayview Yards,” said Patacairk.
“The Bayview Yards is still in redevelopment negotiation and we’re just talking about what we can do (there). The Bayview redevelopment isn’t a deal-breaker for the studio. Cinespace was to bring us a variety of different locations, and they sat on that one location. And the fact of the matter for one reason or another it didn’t gel,” he said.
Patacairk said the two other bidders will not be tied to build a studio at the Bayview site.
“There are other places in the city where this could possibly go. The next proponent can bring those to us. They can reintroduce Bayview, but we’ve already been down that road,” he said.
Patacairk declined to name the other two companies still in the running but said he hoped to make a decision on the winning bid in April.