November 22, 2004

Mayor Richard M. Daley introduced a plan to the Chicago City Council November 3 to build a $43.7 million film and television studio complex on a former illegal dumpsite in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side of the city.

"Transforming this former dumping ground into a state-of the-art movie and television studio complex is an incredible accomplishment," Daley said. "The redevelopment story is worth a movie script itself."

The project involves the cleanup and sale of 11 acres of vacant land at 4300-58 W. Roosevelt Rd., and the construction of a production studio complex that will have a total of five sound stages: three of 18,000 square feet each, and two of 28,000 square feet each.

The complex — to be known as Central City Studios — would also include a three'story production office building, a 26,660 square-foot mezzanine area for production support, and a landscaped parking lot for approximately 450 parking spaces.

Central City Studios will be managed and operated by Raleigh Enterprises, a Santa Monica (CA) based firm recognized as the largest and best operator of independent film studio facilities in North America. They are the leading rental provider of professional lighting and grip equipment to the motion picture, television, commercial production, and special events industries.

The studio spaces would available for rent to film and television production companies to meet their needs for sound stage space, camera, grip, lighting, and editing equipment in order to produce feature films and television shows.

Raleigh will build the studio through assistance from local development partners Stephan Allison and Donald Jackson, whom had proposed the plan in 1999 to the Department of Planning and Development. The current proposal is a scaled back version of the original plan in order to make it a move viable project.

Under the current proposal, the development team would be sold to the 11-acre city- owned site for the appraised value $1.1 million. The city plans to contribute $10.5 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) assistance to the project, which has a total budget cost of $43.7 million.

A majority of the area was a former abandoned illegal dump for approximately 600,000 cubic yards of construction, demolition debris, and soil. A two year clean-up of the brownfield site was completed December 1997.

Through the spending of studio tenants and related businesses, the proposed film and television studio complex is projected to contribute over $94 million annually to the city's economy. The complex could result in the creation of as many as 1,250 full and part-time jobs.

The developers have committed to working with the mayor's Office of Workforce Development to train and employ resident from surrounding neighborhoods.