With Dick Wolf's production of "Chicago Fire" and other "One Chicago" TV shows, Lena Waithe’s "The Chi" and others, film and television producers spend over $600 million in Illinois each year.
Cinespace’s 36 soundstages near Douglass Park and the $100 million development of Regal Mile Studios in South Shore kicked off last year.
When composer John Williams and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its chorus recorded the score for the Steven Spielberg film "Lincoln" in 2012, Daniels said, “they had nowhere to do it" but Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center in the Loop, so “they lined up sound trucks out on Michigan Avenue.” Little has changed in the ensuing dozen years, he said.
Also fueling demand for a major music production facility is the passage earlier this year in Springfield of the Music and Musicians Tax Credit & Jobs Act. It provides up to $2 million in tax credits to music companies that record soundtracks and employ musicians in Illinois.
The largest component of Third Coast’s proposal is construction of a 31,700-square-foot “scoring stage” building on the Stock Yard Inn parcel at 821 W. Exchange Ave. A scoring stage is a recording facility for producing film and television scores, sometimes with a space large enough to seat an entire orchestra in front of a movie-size screen so they can watch the film they’re scoring. Third Coast’s plans call for an 8,000-square-foot scoring stage contained within the new 31,700-foot building.
Construction of the scoring stage building, designed by Los Angeles firm Nonzero Architecture, on the roughly 1.1-acre vacant site accounts for 70% of the projected cost, or $56 million, according to Hughes. The remaining $24 million is for rehab of the Stock Yards Bank building. The colossal structure at 4150 S. Halsted St. is an oversized architectural homage to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the U.S. Constitution was written and signed.
The bank’s vast interior was eventually fitted out with event space, classrooms and a museum. Third Coast, a not-for-profit, would fund much of the operations in that building with revenues from renting out the scoring stage building, Chatman said.
Third Coast's principals said they have not yet begun fundraising in earnest because they first needed to get the nod from the DPD on the site proposal. Their pitch has been endorsed with letters to the city from officials of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Federation of Labor, Columbia College Chicago, the Merit School of Music and other organizations that might be associated with the scoring stage once it’s open. They also submitted letters from individuals in film production and professional music.
“I’ve made my last two feature films in Chicago, but time and budget dictates that we post, arrange, score and record in L.A.,” wrote Dwayne Johnson-Cochran, whose most recent feature film was "Heist 88," starring Courtney B. Vance and released in 2023. “I would love to be able to finish a film in its entirety in Chicago.”
The proposed scoring stage “is a much-needed piece of infrastructure for our industry that will bring jobs to our community (and) opportunity to hundreds of musicians and musical artists” based in and near Chicago, wrote Bradley Levy, president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians.
Daniels said the group hopes to begin construction of the new building sometime in 2026. Hughes said renovation and opening of the bank building may be done in phases, with the first opening around the same time as the scoring stage building.
