Manhattan Beach to Get 14 Sound Stages

Responding to an unprecedented demand for TV and film studio space caused by Hollywood’s latest production boom, the investment company of Disney scion Roy E. Disney said Monday that it will build 14 sound stages in Manhattan Beach, creating one of the entertainment industry’s largest independent production facilities.

The $77-million project, to be built on 22 largely undeveloped acres formerly owned by defense giant TRW, comes at a time when producers have been scrambling to find available sound stages. Work on films, TV shows, commercials, interactive projects and music videos is exploding because of the global demand for Hollywood’s products and the growth in the number of TV and cable networks.

Developers estimate that as many as 1,800 people eventually will work in film production on the site.

“Every single sound stage is booked. There’s not an inch to be used in this town,” said Stephanie Hershey Liner, executive vice president of the Entertainment Industry Develop Corp., the film office for Los Angeles County.

State officials said they welcome the project, which they hope will help California fend off attempts by other states to court production work with promises of cheap, available sound stages. Virginia recently announced plans to build a batch of sound stages, and other states such as North Carolina and Arizona are aggressively courting Hollywood producers as well.

“This is very welcome news to California. It helps the state remain competitive,” said California Film Commission Director Patti Archuletta.

As the defense economy has diminished in Southern California, state officials have made it a goal to try to convert some of the land and space used by it into entertainment-related businesses.

The project also is another step in the entertainment industry’s spread across Southern California from its core area of the Westside, Hollywood and Burbank. Permanent sound stages now exist as far north as the Santa Clarita Valley, and temporary sound stages have been set up in industrial warehouses and airplane hangers in virtually every part of the Southland. Even the dome that once housed Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose airplane in Long Beach is now a bustling sound stage.

The Manhattan Beach Studios would be the first large-scale Hollywood production facility built in the South Bay, an area traditionally known for its aerospace work. Richard Gentilucci, vice president of real estate for Roy Disney’s Shamrock Holdings, said the site was picked because of the availability of land.

Although TRW is a major defense contractor, company officials denied that the sale of the property was related to any Pentagon cuts, saying instead that the soft commercial real estate market made it cheaper for the company to continue moving into existing buildings than to build from the ground up.

The project is on a fast track, with construction planned to start in July and the first facilities scheduled to be ready in time for the fall 1998 TV season. TRW now has a development agreement with Manhattan Beach allowing the property to be used as a studio. Six sound stages for television will be built in the first phase, with eight stages and offices space developed later.

Although smaller than production facilities on most major studio lots--MCA Inc., for example, has 32 sound stages at Universal Studios, and Warner Bros. has 28 at its main Burbank studio lot--the Manhattan Beach Studios would rank among the largest independent facilities. Indeed, the 285,000 square feet of sound stages would exceed by a few thousand square feet the amount of space at the much-anticipated DreamWorks SKG studio near Marina del Rey planned by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

Shamrock Holdings, the Burbank-based investment arm of the Roy Disney family, acquired the land and will develop the project with CFN/Flesch & Neuhauser, one of the major developers of studio facilities. Roy Disney, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine at $740 million, is the nephew of the late Walt Disney and serves as vice chairman of the Walt Disney Co.

Developers involved in the project, however, insist that the facility is not being built to provide space for the giant studio, saying that space will be leased out competitively to any companies that need it.

Competition for sound stage space is especially intense now, in part because studios are tying up so much space on their own projects and mega-budget films. Production on such movies as “Batman & Robin,” now shooting at Warner Bros., and the “Lost World” sequel to “Jurassic Park” being shot at Universal, use several sound stages at a time. Many producers are being squeezed out of prime space, with rates going as as high as $3,000 a day for some stages.

The Manhattan Beach project also will include the larger sound stages that Hollywood is increasingly demanding. Prime-time television shows use multiple cameras and a variety of permanent sets, which means they need substantial room.

Ten 18,000-square-foot sound stages will be built, along with three 25,000-square-foot stages and one 30,000-square-foot stage that would rank among the 10 largest in the industry. The biggest now in Southern California is a 42,000-square-foot stage at the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City. DreamWorks, whose plans have been stalled by disagreements with developers, wants to build a slightly larger sound stage.