County may seal film studio pact
Related
Advertisement
While project has wide support, its potential size and water demands have raised some concern
5/26/2008 - 5/24/08
The Santa Fe County Commission could vote today on final details of an agreement between the county and a company that wants to build a film studio on N.M. 14.
Those details were still unclear Friday. The item is on the agenda for the meeting, but specifics were not available either from the county or Santa Fe Studios.
County spokesman Stephen Ulibarri said Santa Fe Studios and county staff will probably meet early today, before the 10 a.m. commission meeting, to finalize terms.
Santa Fe Studios is proposing to purchase 65 acres on N.M. 14 from the county for the project. The county recently bought the property from the State Land Office for $2.3 million. Santa Fe Studios has offered the same amount to buy the land, which is near the Penitentiary of New Mexico.
Santa Fe Studios has presented Phase I of its plan — to build a four-stage, environmentally friendly production studio on 48 acres of the land — as an economic development project for the county.
Father and son Lance Hool and Jason Hool, who are the chief executive officer and president of Santa Fe Studios, said the project will net the community millions in gross receipts tax revenue and provide well-paying jobs for county residents and hands-on experience for students enrolled in film-related courses at Santa Fe Community College.
Ulibarri said one of the terms of the as-yet-unreleased Project Participation agreement between the county and the studio would require the studio to provide 800,000 hours of above-minimum-wage employment for county residents within five years.
In return for bringing the project to the county, the Hools are asking Santa Fe County to forgo property taxes on the building for the next 20 years or so; approve infrastructure financing of about $3 million for the project; and give the studio 14 to 20 acre-feet of water for the project. The County has about 25 acre-feet of water earmarked for economic development projects.
The County Commission approved the idea conceptually April 29, but the exact amount of water the project would get and how the infrastructure financing would work are still unknowns.
County Commissioner Jack Sullivan has been critical of Santa Fe Studios' request to be granted the water rights free of charge. "But the rest of the commission hasn't seen it as an issue," Sullivan said Friday.
County officials and staff alike have been unabashedly supportive of the project, citing it as a rare economic development opportunity and a chance to do something with property where economic development plans have failed to take root in the past.
The project has also gotten the thumbs up from officials at the New Mexico Film Commission, who said Santa Fe needs this kind of infrastructure to compete for film projects with other areas of the state.
But not everyone is as enthusiastic. Mary Burford, a Santa Fe County resident who attended an open house about the project at the Santa Fe Community College on May 21, said she was "disturbed and alarmed" by what she heard.
"Even though I love film and consider myself a film scholar, ... I was horrified at the hubris of some of the things they were saying," Burford said. She said she was particularly bothered by hearing studio representatives and county staff say the project would change Santa Fe forever. Burford, 51, said she was also concerned about the size of the development and how much water it would use. "I came away with the feeling that it is an already slick done deal," she said.
Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.
