Author: jordan-weaver

$100-Million Mediapro Studios Project in Yonkers Breaks Ground

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A rendering of the Mediapro Studios at Great Point looking Northeast at North Broadway and Odell Terrace in Yonkers.

Real Estate In-Depth | November 7, 2023

YONKERS—Mediapro North America, a leader in the world of media and entertainment held a groundbreaking ceremony on Nov. 6 for the Mediapro Studios at Great Point Studios project. The event took place at 1500 North Broadway in Yonkers with Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano in attendance as well as key executives and stakeholders from Mediapro and Great Point Studios.

Mediapro’s collaboration with Robert Halmi’s Great Point Studios will add another world-class hub for film and television production in the heart of Yonkers, further strengthening the region’s role as a premier destination for the entertainment industry, city officials stated. Great Point Studios, already one of the country’s largest owners of television and film production facilities in the Northeast, has existing long-term partnerships with Lionsgate and Syracuse University.

The groundbreaking ceremony, hosted by Yonkers Mayor Spano, was attended by key executives and stakeholders from Mediapro, Great Point Studios, and local dignitaries.

Yonkers Mayor Spano said, “The addition of Mediapro to Yonkers’ growing film and production landscape further demonstrates our city’s reimagined approach to redevelopment, creating local jobs and economic vitality. We are thankful to Mediapro at Great Point Studios for investing in Yonkers and expanding its footprint here, truly making us Hollywood on Hudson.”

The new Mediapro Studios at Great Point Studios facility will offer cutting-edge production space and will offer soundstages, post-production facilities and other amenities that Mediapro officials said will attract filmmakers, content creators, and production companies from around the world.

“This groundbreaking is a testament to our commitment to innovation and excellence in the world of media and entertainment,” said Irantzu Diez-Gamboa CEO, MEDIAPRO North America. “We are excited to be part of this expansion that will not only bolster our industry but also contribute to the growth and prosperity of Yonkers and the entire region.”

“We’re thrilled to partner with Mediapro and expand our production facility footprint in Yonkers. Mayor Spano and the entire Yonkers community has been incredibly supportive and welcoming as they share in our vision for regional economic growth.” said Robert Halmi, Founder & CEO of Great Point Studios.

When open in the fall of 2024, the facility will feature three stages encompassing 20,000 square feet, providing ample space for large-scale productions. In addition, one of the three stages, a 10,000-square-foot facility, will be ideal for more intimate projects, ensuring that the studios are equipped to accommodate a wide range of production needs, Mediapro stated.

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Great Point Studios breaks ground on $100M studio campus in Yonkers

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News 12 Westchester

By: Emily Young

Great Point Studios, the owner of Lionsgate Studios in Yonkers, broke ground Monday on its new $100 million studio campus.

“The No. 1 place in the United States to make film and television, that’s Yonkers now,” said Robert Halmi, CEO and founder of Great Point Studios. “That’s where people are coming from, and that’s where they’re going to be coming from in the future.”

Its new long-term tenant is Mediapro North America, one of the largest media companies in the world, with a presence in 31 countries.

“This is an amazing campus, and will be an epicenter of TV and film industry in the eastern seaboard, ” said Fernan Zuluaga, from Mediapro.

Great Point Studios opened its $500 million Lionsgate Studios back in January 2022 to satisfy an overwhelming demand for studio space in the New York City area.

Just 11 miles north of the city, Yonkers is billed as a great solution.

“With this new addition of the media pro campus, it will put our total studio presence in Yonkers over 1 million-square-feet of studios and production facilities,” Halmi said.

The 20,000-square-foot studio, which is expected to open next fall, will employ 400 people.

“We saw the great opportunity to create community and help to bring business to the city that’s why we saw the opportunity in Yonkers,” explained Zuluaga.

Officials say the new facility will offer soundstages, post-production facilities and other amenities that will attract filmmakers and production companies from around the world.

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How Studios Are Taking a Leading Role in Sustainability in Face of Climate Change Emergency

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By Gregg Goldstein


Balmori Associates

With climate change and pollution making environmental concerns more urgent than ever, studios and productions are taking a lead role in incorporating sustainability into the workplace. And in some cases, it’s a necessity.

As New York City experiences a boom in studio construction, for example, recent legislation requires most buildings that exceed 25,000-gross-square-feet to to meet new energy efficiency standards and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 through solar panels, green roofs and other methods. “Studios have a unique opportunity with green roofs, because we’re typically low buildings with flat roofs,” says Silvercup Studios director of studio construction and capital projects Josh Sager.

Sager, a New York City department of environmental protection vet, is more familiar with the topic than most. He notes that Silvercup was one of the first adopters of green roof technology in 2005. “It helps clean the air, reduce storm-water runoff, lower energy consumption and reduce the ‘heat island effect’” found in urban areas, he says.

Robert Halmi’s Great Point Media is taking a novel approach to sustainability at its Lionsgate Studios Yonkers and Great Point Studios Buffalo in upstate New York, as well as its upcoming Atlanta and Newark, N.J., studios, by creating organic gardens on their green roofs for the food they serve. “In Wales, we’re building habitats for bees on the top of our stages to rebuild what we’re disturbing by creating the stages in the first place,” Halmi says of the Great Point complex in Cardiff, Wales.

And since a sustainable studio is arguably one that’s built to survive climate change-induced flooding, Robert De Niro’s new Wildflower Studios, opening in Queens next summer, certainly qualifies.

“The entire structure is elevated one story, and all of the power and vital equipment was moved up to the roof,” says managing partner Adam Gordon. “So in a Hurricane Sandy[-style] event, water could wash in and out of the garage, while soundstages above are completely unaffected.”

Most of Wildflower’s roof has solar panels, and it uses LED technology that “generates much less heat, an important component of heating and cooling buildings like this.”

Who better to ask about sustainability than Sustainable Studios COO Gavin Curran? “We use green energy and solar panels on the roof,” he says of the two-year-old Moonachie, N.J., outfit. “I’d love to explore wind power turbines, [since] there are new quieter ones. We’re working with local communities to recycle and give away wardrobe, hair, makeup, props, sets, lumber — anything we can, We also retrofit our building, instead of clearing land and setting up a new one or knocking one down.”

As Silvercup’s Sager notes, the amount of carbon produced from a renovation is “astronomically less” than with new construction.

There are several resources for filmmakers looking to make their sets green. For example, they can attend the Sustainable Production Forum, which holds conferences in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toronto. “What we’re looking to do is accelerate sustainability and decarbonization by providing folks that work in film and television with tools, skills, understanding about industry baselines, knowledge about where they can find resources and who they can get those resources from,” says founder Zena Harris.

One such resource is Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Earth Angel, which reduces the environmental impact of productions by donating food, managing crew waste and implementing energy efficiency and fuel reduction strategies. Series like Showtime’s “Billions,” limited series like Amazon’s “The Underground Railroad” and films like “Avengers: Infinity War” have hired them.

Atlanta-based Electric Owl Studios works with Earth Angel, along with Rescuing Leftover Cuisine to redistribute extra food from sets, Cherry Street Energy for solar panel power, the Lifecycle Building Center to capture building materials for community reuse, and Live Thrive’s Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (ChaRM) to divert hazardous household waste and other items from local landfills and water systems. Studio co-founder Dan Rosenfelt says his company uses nontoxic cleaning supplies, solar-powered golf carts and solar panels that offset 30% of their energy consumption. He plans to break ground on a Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., branch of Electric Owl early next year, aiming for a mid-2025 opening.

“We hope to offset at least 60%-70% of our overall energy consumption there” with solar panels, Rosenfelt says. “And we’ll continue to work with most of these incredible partners.”

Original Article: https://variety.com/2023/film/spotlight/studios-sustainability-climate-change-1235776025/

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Great Point Studios, Lionsgate coming to Douglas County

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By FOX 5 Atlanta Digital Team Published  |  April  5, 2023  |  NewsFOX 5 Atlanta


Great Point Studios is building a new film and television complex with Lionsgate Studios as its anchor tenant in Douglas County.

 

DOUGLAS COUNTY – Metro Atlanta’s movie production footprint is growing with a major studio expansion project.
Great Point Studios is building a new film and television complex with Lionsgate Studios as its anchor tenant in Douglas County, where some of the location filming was done on Lionsgate’s mega-hit franchise “The Hunger Games.”

Great Point Studios is building a new film and television complex with Lionsgate Studios as its anchor tenant in Douglas County.

 

The 500,000-square-foot, full service, modern entertainment complex will include 12 large sound stages, office and support space, a back lot and parking for 400 cars and 100 trucks.
“In response to continued strong demand for our content, we’re pleased to partner with Great Point Studios and The State of Georgia to extend our studio facilities production footprint to metro Atlanta,” said Lionsgate EVP of Television Production Gary Goodman. “Lionsgate Studios Atlanta becomes our third state-of-the-art production complex with proximity to a major metropolitan area, allowing us to continue to scale our film & television production operations, create hundreds of local jobs and invest in regional economic growth.”


Great Point Studios is building a new film and television complex with Lionsgate Studios as its anchor tenant in Douglas County.

 

Great Point Studios is building a new film and television complex with Lionsgate Studios as its anchor tenant in Douglas County.

Original Article: https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/great-point-studios-lionsgate-coming-to-douglas-county

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Robert Halmi’s Great Point Studios & Mediapro Launch Phygital FX Joint Venture; Mario Sousa CEO

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By Jill Goldsmith

Robert Halmi’s Great Point Studios has partnered with Spain’s Grup Mediapro to form Phygital FX, offering expansive production services and led by Mediapro veteran Mario Sousa.

Plans are for the joint venture, initially a U.S. project, to expand globally, providing full production services to the film and television industry from stage and studio rentals; rental equipment including lighting, grip and electric; postproduction services; graphics; and virtual production services.

Halmi told Deadline that Phygital has committed more than $50 million to acquire state-of-the-art lighting and grip equipment, and set aside 200,000 square feet of space to store it in across Great Point’s growing roster of studio locations. Lionsgate Studio Yonkers is up and running while still being built out. Great Point now has 63 film stages open or under construction at locations in Yonkers, Atlanta, Buffalo, Newark and Wales. Halmi stepped in as did other developers to address the deficit of studio space as streaming led to a surge in content production.

Phygital (the name is a combination of the words “physical: and “digital”) will also offer services to interested productions outside the Great Point network.

Spain-based Mediapro is an anchor tenant at Lionsgate Studios Yonkers. The European media powerhouse, which produces more than 12,000 live events each year, along with 13 top-tier national soccer competitions, as well as scripted and unscripted content, has a major global equipment and technology business.

Sousa, who was most recently in Miami for Mediapro, moved to New York in 2019 to extend its production services Stateside, ultimately landing a base at Mediapro stages in Yonkers. Halmi, at the same time, wanted to offer Great Point producers the convenience of not having to haul in their own equipment, and to provide the latest of what the market has to offer as productions, especially TV, have expanded, becoming bigger, more multilayered and complex.

Halmi proposed a broad venture servicing all Great Point locations, and the broader industry, but didn’t have anyone in house to lead it. That led to the JV with Phygital and Sousa at the helm.

The company has been active for a while, servicing production from Raising Kanan to Winston, but just closed all the JV documents and formally named Sousa CEO of what the exec called “a one-stop shop for technical stages services.”

That also coincided with strikes by writers and actors in a time of upheaval in the entertainment industry. As a result, Souza said he’s pivoted a bit, now looking at musicals, which are still up and running, commercial shoots and other productions that need lighting and services. “This is a start-up,” he said. “So we need to try. … These now are some of my priorities.”

When the strikes end and productions return — to sets that were left on stages — the company is ready to gear up.

 

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