National Resources JV Finds Financing for Yonkers Studios

A joint venture between Great Point Studios and National Resources landed financing for one of its Yonkers film studio projects.

On Wednesday, First Citizens Bank announced that one of its divisions lent the joint venture $42.2 million for the development at 1050 North Broadway. The entertainment production facility is expected to span 112,000 square feet, including offices, warehouses and mill space.

With the financing, the joint venture checks off a big box on the development’s to-do list. The space is already entirely pre-leased to MediaPro US, a Spanish-language production company.

The spree in Yonkers film production space, particularly by Great Point and National Resources, stems from the rise of streaming services and New York state’s famously generous film production tax credit, which politicians recently expanded (to the horror of some watchdog groups).

Late last year, the National Resources entity iPark purchased a 28-acre campus at 463 Hawthorne Avenue from nonprofit Rising Ground for $52.6 million, planning to build a production facility at the site.

That campus is double the size of the North Broadway hub, spanning 265,000 square feet of built space across 25 buildings, as well as a baseball field, an indoor basketball court and indoor and outdoor pools. There’s also 2 million square feet of development rights.

The sites are roughly 20 minutes apart by car.

The two development firms also partnered on the $100 million Lionsgate Studios in Yonkers, a 108,000-square-foot facility that helped power a wave of production space in the Westchester County city. The joint venture scored a $40 million construction loan from CIT Bank — the same division of First Citizens that provided the latest Yonkers production development loan.

First Citizens recently pulled the plug on issuing general office loans, weary of forthcoming losses on Class B office debt. In March, the Charlotte-based bank agreed to buy the assets and liabilities of Silicon Valley Bank, assuming $72 billion in loans and $56 billion in assets.