Media: Allen Park threatens to cut studio from film complex
Jaclyn Trop for The Detroit News
The city of Allen Park is threatening to evict Unity Studios from a city-owned studio complex because the company has allegedly missed rent payments and not complied with other lease requirements.
The fight could be a setback for Michigan’s budding film industry.
Allen Park and parent company Unity Holdings are holding talks about the lease, but the city wants Unity to leave the complex by June 7 unless a settlement is reached.
The default on the contract “leaves us no option other than to protect the city and our taxpayers by exercising our right to terminate the lease if necessary,” Allen Park Mayor Gary Burtka said in a statement.
A Unity official said the company has made all of its payments but wouldn’t specify when they were made.
“We’re current on our lease,” Unity Marketing Director Eric Cedo said. “We’re current on all rent due.”
The city maintains Unity has paid its base rent of $25,000 but still owes $17,000 in additional rent. Unity expects to resolve the lease issues this week, Cedo said.
“We have no plans to leave Allen Park,” he said.
Allen Park also started legal action because it contends Unity failed to provide quarterly balance sheets indicating profits or losses, information on employees and a list of its complete curriculum, instructional staff and students for the Lifton Institute for Media Skills. The institute is named after Unity leader Jimmy Lifton, a Detroit native.
The city still intends to develop the 600,000-square-foot Allen Park Studio Complex whether it keeps Unity Holdings as a tenant or not, Burtka said.
Unity’s troubles don’t spell an end for the complex, agreed Chris Baum, senior vice president of sales and marketing at the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau and its Film Detroit division.
A crew for a movie called “Salvation Boulevard,” starring Pierce Brosnan and Marisa Tomei, began preproduction in Allen Park three weeks ago. The Film Detroit office also intends to give tours to visiting film and television directors, Baum said.
An eviction would be a blow to Michigan’s emerging network of film studios. Unity, one of three large planned studios that could serve a year-round industry, had held training classes and graduated students in February, but had yet to build sound stages.
Plans to build studios at Ford Field in Detroit and in Pontiac also have been slow to develop.
Wonderstruck Studios, a digital content creation studio planned for Ford Field, is still aiming for a June opening, Baum said. The studio’s website declares it’s “open for business.”
Neither Ford Field officials nor Wonderstruck founder Michele Richards replied to requests for comment Tuesday.
Construction on Raleigh Studios Michigan may begin at General Motors Co.’s former Pontiac facility as soon as next week. Plans for the $60 million project include renovating the 368,000-square-foot building and building a 185,000-square-foot sound stage. The project’s final hurdle is approval by the Oakland County Economic Development Corp. to issue $25 million in recovery bonds.
In a recent interview, S3 Entertainment managing partner Jeff Spilman said the recession and the political debate about the state’s two-year-old film tax credits have made getting loans difficult. S3 has located an office and built a sound stage in Ferndale.
“That uncertainty can definitely make it harder for some projects to get the financing,” Spilman said.
But Unity’s situation doesn’t reflect the industry’s overall health, said Ken Droz of the Michigan Film Office. Farmington Hills-based Grace & Wild, which has the state’s only full-service sound stage, has been a bright spot.
“On the whole, the film industry is going really well,” Droz said.
Critics of the tax incentives disagree.
“We’ve selected film studios as an economic winner, and they’ve proven anything but,” said James Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
The research center found film jobs in Michigan declined since the incentives began in April 2008, though the data didn’t include all film freelance jobs.
The tax incentives don’t ensure all studios will succeed, the Governor’s Office said.
“We can provide incentives,” said spokeswoman Liz Boyd, “but … it’s up to the companies to transform their business plan into a thriving operation.”
Staff writer Louis Aguilar contributed.
