The Thompson-Nicola Film Commission has identified six potential areas around Kamloops that could eventually become the home of a new film studio.
“There is east Kamloops out by Dallas way, there might be something in the Southwest corridor on the north or the south side of the highway. Maybe something up towards Tranquille. Maybe the airport area,” Film Commission Victoria Weller said. “So there are a number of different areas that we just want to investigate.”
Weller told NL News on Friday that the TNRD will not be building the $32.6-million facility on its own.
Instead, she says they’re hoping to do a $35,000 site selection study which will aim to answer a lot of questions that potential investors and developers may have – essential a pro and con list for each of the locations they’ve identified.
“We have got to worry about the airports and proximity and noise. What about the railways? Should we be near them? Do we need to be near hotels, restaurants and others?” Weller told the TNRD’s Committee of the Whole on Friday.
“We have also got to worry about the topography when we look at sites. What about flood plains? What about archaeological considerations? Then there is proximity to highway corridors. Fire flows, sanitary, utility and power…all stuff that if somebody is going to ask us, we got to have answer for.”
Chad Rickaby, a manager with Nordicity – the firm which conducted the feasibility study – told the TNRD board in February that if they were to move forward, they would have to identify a large enough site for the studio that was not too far from an urban area which was zoned for medium industrial or a warehouse building.
Weller says the Film Commission will make all of the information from both studies public to anyone who wants it.
“The investors are going to have to pay for a deep dive but we’re just going to do sort of a scan of what is there and what is not there so they can determine if they want to pick one of those sites or choose something else,” Weller said.
“Maybe somebody has private property [that could work].”
The TNRD Committee of the Whole voted in favour of taking the film studio site selection study to a future meeting of the TNRD Board of Directors.
Sun Peaks Mayor Al Raine was the only one was voted against the move. He told his colleagues he was hoping to see an independent feasibility and business case that would tell the TNRD that the Kamloops film studio “would work.”
“There is great enthusiasm but it is frightening the amount of money that is being invested. It scares me to the point of saying that everybody is jumping in at a time when they should not be jumping in,” Raine said during the Friday committee meeting.
“We need to have an independent feasibility business case before we start trudging around planning what we are going to do.”
But Weller told Raine that the Nordicity report was that independent feasibility study which showed that the Kamloops film studio “would work.”
“It was based on a business case that included the figures of how much occupancy would be required to break even and start making money,” Weller said.
“That is why we say we want to release the entire report whereas to the board we just released a little bit of it at this time because we didn’t it was quite ready for the public.
In February, Rickaby recommending that the TNRD charge $3.60 per square-foot per month for the two main, 20,000 square-foot sound stages. At that rate, he said the Kamloops film studio could bring between $1.6 and $2.6-million in revenue each year, with about $635,000 a year going towards operating expenses.
“You would be very competitive with secondary markets at that rate and be at quite a significant discount to primary markets like Vancouver which charge around $6, sometimes more,” Rickaby said.
“It would be quite a draw to those especially in Vancouver that would be looking for cheaper sound stage space.”
Rickaby also said it would “only take a few personnel to maintain the site” noting the economic impact would come primarily from the spinoff jobs and spending on things like hotels and restaurants in the Kamloops-area.
“At full capacity, if there was a production in there 100 per cent of the time, it would be hundreds, if not thousands of jobs when thinking about total economic impact,” Rickaby said.