Keeping the movies moving
Laura Sturza
If the trucks stored at Desmond’s Studio Production Services could
talk, they would have plenty to tell.
Inside the 450 mobile dressing rooms, special-effects trucks and
other industry vehicles stored on the company’s 13 acres, the world’s
biggest stars and crews have changed clothes, argued, slept and eaten
meals that ranged from fast food to five-star.
Company president Don Desmond does not own the vehicles and
equipment stored on his lot, but leases space to business owners from
cities including Burbank and Glendale. Those businesses send out
their vehicles to location shoots in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
“You’d think this was a studio lot some days, it’s so busy here,”
Desmond said.
Desmond, 78, left the Army in 1946 to work in the construction
department at Warner Bros. on films including “Giant.” He went on to
become a transportation coordinator for various TV series, such as
“Roots.”
His business opened in 1976 and is the largest facility of its
kind in Los Angeles, Desmond said.
Jeff Renfro runs Burbank’s High Noon, which leases mobile dressing
rooms to production companies and studios. He said that most people
have no idea how dependent the industry is on vehicles -- which allow
shooting to move from one location to another.
“The facilities are next to none in the world,” Renfro said of
Desmond’s lot and its proximity to the studios, airport and freeways.
Desmond’s will relocate later this year from the land it leases
from the Sun Valley side of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport to
other land owned by the airport in Burbank.
The company is expanding to 15 acres, and Desmond expects it will
continue to grow to 25 acres.
Sale of the Sun Valley property to Voit Development Company
precipitated the move and will benefit Burbank’s tax base --
airport-owned land generates tax revenue only when it is leased to an
outside vendor, Desmond said.