Soaring high above the Queensboro Bridge, the giant Silvercup Studios logo — New York’s answer to California’s famous Hollywood sign — stands like a sentinel over the beige brick building where many iconic modern films were made.
Amid half-empty warehouses, industrial businesses and taxi parking garages, this slice of Long Island City is where the Devil put on Prada, Harry met Sally and the Godfather met his end. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda mulled over their sex lives, and Tony Soprano took care of business.
But the growth of the entertainment industry in the city is facing some tough realities, with space fetching a bigger premium than stardom.
Demand is reaching record levels for shooting in the city, and Silvercup and New York’s two other major studios — Steiner Studios and Kaufman Astoria Studios — are planning to add about 979,000 more square feet of studio space to the city’s current 1.21 million square feet, bringing the total to 2.19 million square feet.
Silvercup is planning a $1 billion expansion that will add 650,000 square feet to its current facilities. Steiner Studios, the city’s newest studio, will expand from its current 310,000 square feet with the addition of 289,000 square feet. Kaufman Astoria Studios, the home of “Sesame Street,” has 500,000 square feet of space and plans to add an 18,000-square-foot stage and about 22,000 square feet of support and office space.
Silvercup began creating new TV and film characters after the networks announced their television lineups, and the busy shooting season started recently, says Alan Suna, Silvercup’s founder and chief executive officer. That means cash will keep coming in, but an awful lot of it will have to go out to meet the studio’s expansion needs.
Building and maintaining studio space is expensive because of the equipment involved, says Doug Steiner, the chairman of Steiner Studios. “It’s like a four-star hotel for very, very demanding clientele.” New facilities in New York, he added, are “way more expensive to build than in L.A.”
Up until a few years ago, films about New York were shot in other cities and countries, according to Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. The long-running television show “Seinfeld” took place in New York, but apart from a few exterior shots in the opening credits, it was shot in Los Angeles.
City tax incentives put in place in 2004 have played an integral role in luring production business back to New York, which now has a $5 billion film industry that employs about 100,000 people. The new law created a 5 percent refundable tax credit for production companies to claim for those who work behind the scenes, such as production and camera crews, makeup artists and legions of assistants, says Steiner, who lobbied hard for the bill’s passage. The new bill added to a 10 percent state tax credit passed in 2003.
The number of film, television show, commercial and music video shoots in New York City reached a record high of nearly 35,000 shoot days in 2006, according to figures from Oliver’s office.
“It’s more financially reasonable for producers” to shoot in New York, says Suna, who also advocated for the legislation. Previously, the cost of production in the city drove producers to choose other cities, like L.A., Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. Canada was also a popular choice because of the weak Canadian dollar. As its value has strengthened, the benefits of choosing that location have diminished, Suna says.
Actual numbers regarding studio space rent rates and construction rates are hard to come by, but Steiner makes a few comparisons to put it in perspective. The spaces, he says, rent for “a lot less than you’d think, and a lot less than in L.A.” He did say that production office space in New York City overall is in “the low teens per square foot gross.” The industry, he added, “is a very tightfisted business.”
Studios can accommodate multiple projects at once. Television shows typically rent per week, and commercials and music videos rent by day, Suna says. Parking space, office space and studios can be rented out individually based on necessity. And the studios deal directly with the production coordinators and producers on the projects. “It is not a brokerage-driven business,” Steiner says, and independent brokers are not typically involved in the rental negotiations.
Silvercup Bakery was the original occupant of what is now Silvercup Studios, which was converted to its present form in 1983. Over the past two decades, it has established itself among the leading production facilities in the U.S. Spread over two lots, Silvercup has 18 separate studio spaces, ranging in size from 3,000 to 18,000 square feet.
Expansion plans will create Silvercup West, a 2.7-million-square-foot new construction, multipurpose space that will include studios, residences, offices and parking. The project will break ground in 2008.
Queens also has the 1920-vintage Kaufman Astoria Studios, which was founded by early East Coast film mogul Adolph Zukor and eventually taken over by Paramount Studios. A postwar period of disuse ended when a nonprofit organization reopened it for the 1977 production of “The Wiz.” In 1980, real estate developer George Kaufman expanded and rebuilt the studio in Astoria. Today it has six stages, as well as office, studio and support space. Current plans for expansion include a building that will house a new stage and 22,000 square feet of support and office space.
Built from the bottom up in 2004, Steiner says that Steiner Studios “were the first purpose-built stages [in New York] in about 50 years.” Located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard near Williamsburg, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, Steiner Studios has plans to grow by adding a 250,000-square foot adjacent building, says Steiner. Steiner currently has about 100,000 square feet of sound stages and 185,000 square feet of office space, make-up rooms, mill shops and other space.
“We have plans to become a full-blown Hollywood-style lot, to become the media district for New York City,” says Steiner. The studio’s best-known productions to date fittingly include the movie version of “The Producers.”
Accessible and abundant resources are another reason shooting in New York makes sense.
“New York is one of the greatest cities in the world,” Suna says. “It has a pool of acting talent, directorial talent and writing talent that make homes here and are less gypsy-like.”
And do the studio heads think the boom will last?
“We do,” Suna says, “or else we wouldn’t be planning on doubling our size.”