October 20th, 2008 · 1 Comment

By John DeFore

Hollywood is known for conspicuous environmentalism, but its legendary movie studios were built many decades before anyone thought about a production’s environmental impact. Now a team including former Paramount Pictures president David Kirkpatrick hopes to change that by building “the first all-union built, green, SMART studio facility in the world” — in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The team behind Plymouth Rock Studios announced this month that it “has registered its entire development project with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) in order to pursue campus-wide, new construction certification under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED(R)) standards.”

This will be no rinky-dink, hangar-plus-solar-roof affair. The entire project, scheduled to break ground in spring 2009 and open a year and a half later, is expected to cost $422 million and will include “fourteen sound stages, ranging in size from 18,000 to 24,000 square feet” in addition to “10-acre backlots [that] will provide easy access to the cobblestone streets of Paris or Rome, the bustle of Los Angeles or New York, the glamour of Beverly Hills or any other city in the world you wish to capture.” (The campus will go beyond production features as well, with a “studio as city” ideal that already has the developers recruiting office tenants.)

Designed by Gensler, an architecture firm that among other green achievements just built the country’s first LEED-certified car dealership outside Dallas, the site will not only produce solar- and wind-generated electricity, but promises to offer such unpredictable amenities as onsite organic gardens and composting facilities.

And for anyone asking “why Massachusetts?,” the branding-conscious entrepreneurs are quick to describe Plymouth as “America’s Hometown” and the area as a nascent “Hollywood East” with a history of regionally-shot hits like Jaws and Good Will Hunting under its belt. Big new tax incentives have brought productions like Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Shutter Island to the area, and one imagines this new studio could only sweeten the deal.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media