Moviemakers Press On With River St. Studio Plans

The backers of a planned new movie studio in Fair Haven are pushing ahead with plans to transform the derelict industrial River Street waterfront into a revitalized creative arts district.

Higher-ups at Jaigantic Studios offered that update Wednesday morning during the latest monthly meeting of the city’s Development Commission. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom. 

Jaigantic Studios business consultant Donna Lecky and CEO Donovan De Boer presented to the commissioners a detailed update and overview of the self-described ​“mini-major studio’s” ongoing efforts to build 25 new soundstages in Fair Haven across two phases of development. 

They said the project should take over $200 million to complete, and claimed it would result in thousands of jobs along with movie-and-TV-production-related economic development. 

De Boer, Jaigantic Studios President and movie superhero Michael Jai White and other movie-studio boosters have spent the better part of the past year pitching Jaigantic’s plans to Fair Haven neighbors and residents across the city. 

Commissioners weren’t asked to take any votes Wednesday. City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli did advise them that a proposed amendment to the River Street Municipal Development Plan (MDP) as well as a proposed Development and Land Disposition Agreement (DLDA) for publicly owned land at 46/56 River St. should soon be heading their way for review.

“Our big push is to have New Haven be an emerging media technology and training center,” De Boer told the commissioners. ​“We really want to create a district that is a showcase for everything New Haven has to offer in the creative arts.”

“One of the reasons we thought it important to get a more complete update today,” Piscitelli said, was to give ​“a sense of readiness as we get closer to bringing you the formal DLDA and technical amendments to the MDP, which is within the purview of this commission.”

This latest update came roughly four months after Jaigantic’s path to redeveloping River Street was cleared of any major private competition, as New England Brewing Co. — which had previously planned on relocating from Woodbridge to a similar stretch of Fair Haven — bagged their River Street plans and decided to move to West Haven instead.

So. What’s the latest with Jaigantic’s plans for Fair Haven? 

Lecky and De Boer offered the following updates:

• Jaigantic is currently in the process of negotiating a DLDA with the city for publicly owned land at 46/56 River St. near Poplar Street. The studio plans to build five new soundstages on that site. ​“Once we’re up and running, we’re going to be able to generate, in full swing, over 1,000 jobs within these stages,” De Boer said. ​“We’re really focusing on local recruitment, building a workforce here in Connecticut, keeping the youth here, training them, and putting them into very high paying union jobs. That’s the focus for the entire district.”

• That 46/56 River St. site would be a part of the project’s ​“Phase 1,” which should see a total of 12 new soundstages built across various parcels of land that Jaigantic is in the process of purchasing across this stretch of Fair Haven. De Boer said each of these stages should support 200 jobs. ​“We have a big focus and push to be the first virtual production hub in the U.S.,” he said. 

That would mean building out some stages that are encircled by LED screens and that would allow for moviemakers to ​“shoot anywhere in the world, all on a stage. We don’t have to worry about seasons, weather, or snow. We can be shooting here 24/7, 365 days a year.”

• In total, he said, Phase 1 should cost around $80 million to build out. He and Lecky said that Jaigantic has already raised $23 million towards that goal.

• Phase 2, meanwhile, would cost another $125 million and ​“will net us a couple thousand more jobs,” he said. That would see the creation of 13 additional soundstages, including seven virtual production stages. ​“We’re still about 25 acres from completing what we set out to do” for Phase 2, he said. ​“We’re very close to reaching our goal for Phase 1 as far as acquisitions go.”

• De Boer and Lecky said Jaigantic currently has a 20,000 square-foot movie production facility on 17.5 acres of land Shelton. They’re doing a ​“big buildout” there of five soundstages, and will officially open that Shelton film production site on April 1. ​“This is serving as our main headquarters” while the Fair Haven project is in the works, he said.

• Comparing Jaigantic’s movie-studio plans for New Haven to those realized by film start Tyler Perry in Atlanta, Lecky said that the Fair Haven project could generate 10,000 jobs and $3.1 billion in studio production revenue. ​“That’s fairly conservative,” she said about those estimates.

So it sounds like Jaigantic would essentially have two campuses, Development Commission Chair Anthony Sagnella said. One in Shelton, one New Haven. What would be the difference between the two?

“New Haven is our primary home,” De Boer said. The Shelton site ​“is our operational place until we can move to New Haven. … The primary administration and the primary virtual production stages, those are all set to be in Fair Haven. That’s the real hub. That’s the real core of the entire studio system that we’re bringing. Shelton right now will become a kind of satellite to the main administration headquarters.”

Development Commissioner John Martin praised the Jaigantic leads for their ​“very ambitious project,” and for focusing in particular on creating thousands of new jobs.

“We want this to be a project that makes you excited and that helps lift up the neighborhood and the city at large with a lot of jobs that could be pathways for people to grow in the industry,” he said.