Gateway Studios is planning a two building project at the Northeast corner of Chesterfield Airport Road and Spirt of St. Louis Boulevard. Plans submitted to the Chesterfield planning dpoeartment include site plans and renderings for the new buildings.
5-story, 168 room hotel with a 1000sf restaurant space fronting Spirit of St. Louis Boulevard.
3-story, 329,673sf studio building for Gateway Studios fronting Chesterfield Airport Road.
Not sure but this sort of looks like it could be a TV studio/music studio or something along those lines.
I've started having a weird feeling looking at these plans and thinking about that maybe, just maybe, KMOV could be moving here. They're in Gateway Tower right now and they are a TV studio. I hope that's not the case.
Not much help from the MO SOS records. Registered by a trustee service with a generic purpose for organization. It was registered on June 29th, so it's a new entity.
The Partnership, a regional economic development agency, is asking St. Louis County to approve at least $88 million in Chapter 100 bonds toward financing the cost of the development, and as much as $130 million, “to provide for contingencies.” Such bonds could give developers 10 years of tax abatement. The Partnership said the St. Louis region competed with Nashville and the state of Georgia for the project.
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Harder said Gateway Studios currently only operates in Pennsylvania, wanted to expand into the Midwest, and appreciated St. Louis’ access to highways for distribution. Partnership documents said Gateway also liked the site’s proximity to Spirit of St. Louis Airport.
^Oh, very cool! We do certainly have some scene shops, but this is a wee bit more ambitious. I'm not aware of anyone closer than Chicago that could hope to bid on a stadium tour. I have to think it would be a good fit. I'm a bit surprised that site hasn't been developed yet. And I hate hate hate development out in Gumbo Flats, but . . . I'll make an exception just this once. (The last shop I worked in got flooded out every now and then anyway. Just watch the weather and make sure you keep the sensitive stuff high enough to stay dry.)
Good to see that this isn't taking KMOV from Downtown. Sounds very unique and interesting. Glad we can get something like this here. Kiss it Georgia and Nashville.
^I don't really think Nashville and Atlanta have anything to worry about here. This is really aimed at a different market. (One dominated by companies like Mountain out of Wilkes-Barre and Upstaging out of Chicago.) This is built to create big tours. They'll build sets, specialized truss systems, rent production equipment, provide a base of operations for folks preparing to tour. That sort of thing. It's really a different market than Atlanta and Nashville. They're both dominated by studios of one sort or another. Same business, but a different sector. (Maybe your Nashville record label hires them to provide a set for their up-and-coming act's new tour. The tour is going to hit all the faraway places with the horrid drives out west, so there's no reason to ship everything out from east of the Mississippi to start with. Might as well get as close as humanly possible. And we are VERY close to the center of population if you're going to go truly national. Not all tours do, but . . . if you want to then we make sense.)
All that said, I'm very glad to see this indeed. The fact that they're including rehearsal space suggests they (or someone related) might be recruiting talent and hands to staff those tours. (backup musicians, dancers, light board operators, tour riggers, and what have you.) And if the tour is based here then the talent might be as well. We've got a pretty good ecosystem of local musicians and theatrical types. Better than any city so far down the food chain has any right to have. (By virtue of the fact we were briefly a lot higher on the food chain, I suppose.) This might provide opportunities for such folks. And it will certainly help to keep said ecosystem healthy. And that, in my book, is a win. (For some reason.) I'll keep my ear to this one.
^ it’s been under construction for quite some time now. Mostly utilities and site work it seems…but very much an active site. I drive by it weekly. They have FAA applications in for 5 or 6 mobile cranes too.
Rage Against the Machine used Enterprise for a week this last summer to warm up and the Eagles have been here for a few days before playing on Tuesday.
The development will include two buildings, a 2-story and a 3-story, along with parking spaces on the south of the existing levee trail. As per the applicant, the buildings will include a casual restaurant, a leasing shop for bicycles and a rooftop terrace. It will also include a wet lake surrounded by a pedestrian trail and manicured landscape that will be open to the public. "These improvements will provide a scenic vista from the buildings on the south side of the levee overlooking the levee," said Shilpi Bharti, city planner. The site will also support a cook’s garden to provide vegetables and fruits to the restaurant in the hotel and the studio kitchen at Gateway Studios.
For their unique music tour fabrication business model, there’s one in Pennsylvania.
When it comes to 100K sq. ft. sound stage for film/tv production (which this can double as), they’re popping up like weeds all over the country. STL is getting left in the dust.
