Investors Propose Studio Complex for Ormond Beach

Promising a big budget and a cast of about 4,000, a Los Angeles investors’ group Wednesday unveiled plans to transform Oxnard into a serious Hollywood player by developing a $90-million film production complex at Ormond Beach.

Dubbed “The Film Factory,” the project is the latest in a series of ambitious proposals for the location that have never come to fruition.

The 117-acre site where the 685,000 square feet of sound stages and other film-related facilities are proposed was most recently slated for a controversial housing project that died when the developer sank into bankruptcy.

Nevertheless, local economic development officials say the project has a solid economic foundation given the chronic shortage of sound stages in the booming Southern California entertainment industry.

“As a feasible project--one with some probability of actually coming to fruition--this is probably the single biggest high-impact project for the city,” said Steve Kinney, executive director of the Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp. “It represents the first version of large-scale development in Ormond Beach that has come along in many years that has in it the elements of community consensus for support.”

Environmental activists are also approaching the idea with cautious optimism, because the project’s backers would spend about $2 million to restore 90 acres of adjacent wetlands. Moreover, the group would provide offices and an observation deck atop a two-story building overlooking the wetlands.

Roma Armbrust, chairwoman of the Ormond Beach Observers, said that although it was too early to say whether the proposal would earn the support of the area’s active band of environmental activists, the idea appeared to have merit.

“It whets your appetite when you see that many acres of wetlands are being restored on paper,” said the head of the environmental watchdog group.

The group of four unidentified investors behind The Film Factory idea hope to open escrow within two weeks on a deal to buy 306 acres of land owned by New Millennium, the company that emerged from the financial ashes of Orange County-based Baldwin Co., which had planned building as many as 5,000 luxury homes.

Kinney hopes ground can be broken on the first phase of The Film Factory site as early as a year from now.

Facilities at the movie complex would be rented to independent television and movie production companies, said Sam Bowlby, a Perris, Calif.-based businessman who is spearheading the effort. The complex would generate the equivalent of nearly 4,000 direct and indirect jobs, he said.

Bowlby has attempted to assemble parcels of land for large projects in the past, including two Los Angeles-area automotive race tracks that were never built.

“What we want to build is a film studio where you can come in the front door with an idea and go out the back door with a finished product,” he said. “It would be the biggest facility available to independent filmmakers.”

The Oxnard site is attractive because it is near the ocean--one huge five-acre sound stage contained within a 110-foot-high building that would be capable of being completely flooded--and it is relatively isolated and thus insulated from noise that can wreak havoc on movie sets.

Moreover, the proposed complex, which could consume about 10 megawatts of electricity, would be near a Southern California Edison power plant.

Oxnard’s proximity to the film industry’s creative community a few miles down the coast in Malibu as well as its relatively small-town flavor are also pluses, Bowlby said.

“We like the pace of Oxnard--the industry is fairly hectic,” he said. “One of the things we wanted to create was a system that was more relaxed and more congenial to the creative process.”

Initial plans call for building 16 separate sound stages totaling 385,000 square feet. In addition, a recording studio, warehouses, production offices and post-production facilities, as well as 14 acres of parking, would be located on the 117-acre main lot.

The balance of the tract would comprise a 47-acre back lot, a 12-acre nursery and the 90 acres of wetlands.

Twelve additional sound stages would be built later if demand warrants them, eliminating some of the warehouses and other facilities, Bowlby said. And in 20 to 40 years, an unidentified utility company could build a desalination plant on the most southerly section of the site, he added.

Bowlby acknowledges that a project of this magnitude faces substantial challenges.

For instance, the Navy has plans to increase low-altitude flights in the area, which could mean a significant increase in noise levels, said Vivian Soo, deputy public works director at Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

“There are so many land mines, anything could kill it,” Bowlby said. “All the environmentalists here could kill it, the Navy could kill it. . . . So far, I haven’t heard anything from anybody that suggests creative people can’t overcome the problems.”

Still, the project bears more than a passing resemblance to the high-profile DreamWorks SKG project in Playa Vista where 1,087 acres of marshy land would be transformed into a massive residential and commercial complex that includes a movie studio.

Despite pledges to restore wetlands in a portion of the area south of Santa Monica, the project has been bogged down in a quagmire of problems, including lawsuits filed by environmentalists concerned that the project threatens nearby wetlands that provide habitat for endangered species.

So far, Bowlby’s group is trying to appear environmentally friendly. For example, the group suggests that a potential environmental hazard in the area--a slag pile created by a metal recycling company--could be cleaned and used in the construction of the film complex.

“I’m not going to go down the same path poor old [Steven] Spielberg and [Jeffrey] Katzenberg went down,” Bowlby said, referring to the famous backers of DreamWorks. “We’re not out to antagonize anybody.”

The project was unveiled Wednesday morning at a meeting of the Ormond Beach Task Force, a group that has toiled for the past decade to reach a consensus over development of the ecologically fragile area.

Indeed, at the same meeting, the group, which represents a spectrum of government agencies, environmental organizations and business leaders, finalized two conservation-oriented plans that would eliminate all residential development in the 1,404-acre area.

The Oxnard City Council could use elements of the plans in an environmental document that would be the precursor to a long-awaited master plan for the area. The environmental report could be completed by the end of the year.

This ongoing planning effort is being paid for, in part, by Edison, which has wanted to develop more than half of 650 acres of land it owns in the area. The company’s plans include a 40-acre recreational vehicle park and 210-acre golf course.

Against this backdrop, The Film Factory proposal may have come along at a fortuitous time, Kinney said.

“The project has at least the possibility of getting inserted into the Specific Plan as a preferred land development scheme,” he said. “It’s a clear stimulus to the Oxnard job base . . . while at the same time being protective of the principal wetland and beach resources there.”

Times researcher William Holmes contributed to this story.