A fire destroyed film company Michelson Studio II, located in Middletown, last November. Less than a year later, owner Eric Michelson has launched a bigger-and-better plan for eight brand-new sound stages at iPark in East Fishkill, Dutchess County.
Michelson’s new studio space would be more than triple the size he had in his century-old building across the river in Orange County. The difference this time is that the stages would be built from the ground up, rather than being retrofitted from a former warehouse that wasn’t intended to be a studio.
Bread boxes – that’s how Michelson described the stages that will be built later this year. They will be large with 40-foot-high ceilings and no columns, thereby removing two common attributes of retrofitted spaces that present issues when filming.
The high ceiling heights make it easier to film certain stunts such as drops and falls. The lack of columns allows for more flexibility and eliminates the need to design around them.
“Everyone has run around and done what they can to look for an existing building that kind of fits the bill,” said Michelson. Instead, he wondered: “Why don’t we just build an empty building and make the ceilings tall? No one has purposefully built one” here in the Hudson Valley.
Michelson first learned of iPark 84 when the Hudson Valley Film Commission brought it to his attention. He then presented the idea for the new sound stages to Joe Cotter, President and CEO of National Resources who is the developer of iPark 84 and the iPark Hudson in Yonkers that is currently building a film production facility for Lionsgate Entertainment. Cotter was all in.
“He’s a smart guy and [is] giving me this opportunity to pull off insane stuff,” said Michelson — referring to the dramatic vibe he hopes to create through his design. Outside the sound stages he plans to have giant, rectangular cement structures originally made for underground sewer systems as well as reflection ponds for aesthetics.
Hollywood roots to inform Hudson Valley vision
Some people call Hudson Valley the new Hollywood because of the uptick in film production in the region. Michelson says not quite. He grew up in Hollywood and was raised on studio sets where his father Harold, a storyboard artist, and his mother Lillian, a film researcher, worked.
Their collaborative film career was the subject of Daniel Raim’s documentary “Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story,” which detailed the lives of his parents who were largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, despite leaving a mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and more.
The east coast, says Michelson, who moved to the Warwick area in the 1980s, doesn’t “understand” Hollywood.
“Hollywood is odd, funny, dreamy, weird and everything you could possibly imagine,” he said.
He has a bold, Hollywood-like vision for his sound stages, and is working closely with architect Stephen O’Dell, who has previously worked on W Hotels and Hilton Hotels, and engineer Wei Wang, who worked on the new Mario Cuomo Bridge, to create a futuristic look that pulls people in.
“Usually when you step inside a studio here, that’s when you get it,” said Michelson. “I want you to get it from a mile away.”
The eight new stages will include six 30,000 square foot facilities and two 15,000 square foot facilities, all with 40-foot ceilings. Aside from the eight sound stages, there will also be 10 acres of backlot — an area containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes — making Michelson iPark a one-stop shop for film and TV production.
There are no productions slated yet for Michelson iPark, however the goal is to get a major entertainment company like HBO, Netflix, Amazon or Showtime to use the stages for years at a time, said Michelson.
All eight stages won’t be built at the same time. The first studio is expected to be up in a year’s time, and if all goes well, the remaining seven will be built in the following year.
Located within a 10-minute distance from over 2,500 hotel rooms, iPark 84 is also home to Sloop Brewing, GlobalFoundries, eMagin, a bakery, gymnasium and more. It has more than 11 new businesses across six parcels, including a new Amazon receiving center.
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