Chicago is about to join the growing list of cities where new soundstage construction will boost the local entertainment economy. The Fields Studios – the city’s first purpose-built and, to date, largest film production complex – will open in the first quarter of 2024.
Owned and developed by real estate firm Knickpoint Ventures, the new campus occupies the site of the former warehouse and distribution center for the city’s legendary Marshall Field’s department store and its retailers across the U.S. It includes nine soundstages on two lots totaling 132,000 square feet of stage space and over 350,000 square feet of creative and production offices, plus mill and support space, on over 20 acres in Chicago’s Northwest Side.
Zain Koita, Founder and Managing Partner of Knickpoint Ventures, is confident the new studio will thrive despite the prevailing economic headwinds now faced by the entertainment industry. “The economy as a whole is reorganizing itself, and entertainment industry is no different,” he says, adding that the industry’s present difficulties are “just a blip on the radar; we’re long-term oriented.”
Further, Koita believes, that film production in Illinois is “underappreciated and underinvested” and that the state’s tax credit “has gone largely unutilized because there are very few studios that are up and operating that can house major productions.” The new project will fill that gap, he says.
Read the full article: Film Production Center The Fields Studios Rises in Chicago
