Even before construction was complete at Crimson Production Studios, producers were stopping by to look at the five soundstages and adjoining offices. Some took the next step and signed contracts to lease the space. For Richard Reilly, one of the four business partners in the new Chatsworth facility, that shows strong demand for soundstages in the Los Angeles region powered by an increase in television shows shooting here. Entertainment industry professionals credit two things for the boost in television shoots – the state’s expanded production tax credit program and the growing number of streaming services such as Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Hulu needing content. “If it is economically feasible, your preference is to shoot something in Los Angeles and not Atlanta, Louisiana or wherever else runaway productions can go,” Reilly said. The first three soundstages at Crimson, measuring 10,100 square feet each, are expected to be ready for filming by the end of July. The remaining two stages, each 5,000 square feet, will open within a month after that. “As soon as stuff is ready we will open,” Reilly said. The group of partners includes entertainment industry veterans Ridge Conlan and Gilbert Yousefian, and Art Davis, with whom Reilly owns Valencia Studios in Santa Clarita. The investors paid $14 million for the 95,000-square-foot building in an industrial area at 9640 Owensmouth Ave. An additional $5 million was spent on the improvements, Reilly said. That includes carving the space into the five soundstages and putting in control rooms, engineering rooms, 43 dressing rooms, five green rooms, hair and makeup rooms, three commissaries and even a fitness center. Conlan said that Crimson Studios will blow away anything offered by other independent production facilities in the city because it has what he described as a wish list for production companies. “It is like Christmas came early when we all joined our hands together to form this company,” Conlan said. While Reilly and Conlan could not disclose the projects interested in Crimson, it has been television shows that have booked the stages there. According to FilmL.A., the Hollywood nonprofit that coordinates on-location filming in the city, county and other jurisdictions, television production increased by 5 percent last year to 16,463 permitted shoot days. A shoot day is one crew’s permission to film at one or more locations during a 24‐hour period. Out of the five categories tracked by FilmL.A., only reality programming on-location filming was down last year. Drama production increased by 1.6 percent and sitcoms increased by 9 percent when compared with 2015. FilmL.A.’s numbers are for on-location only and do not include work done at the major studios or on independent soundstages. However, FilmL.A. is currently collecting data on soundstage occupancy that will be released in the late summer or early fall. Paul Reitzin, president at Avenue Six Studios in Van Nuys, agreed there is a scarcity of good space for television production these days. He said all four of his soundstages are busy with mainly TV and infomercial work. The studio has hosted work by Comedy Central, Funny or Die and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Converted warehouses are an option that production companies consider. There is such a set up across from Avenue Six where game show “Let’s Make a Deal” films, Reitzin said. “I think there are different things for different people,” he added. “But it works.” Comparable space Reilly and his partners are not the only ones in the Valley region creating new soundstages. Walt Disney Co., for instance, still has plans for building up to 12 soundstages as part of its Disney ABC Studios at the Ranch project, which is on its 800-acre Golden Oak Ranch property in unincorporated Santa Clarita. Hollywood-based studio Line 204 has secured L.A. city approval to build a 110,000-square-foot studio and a 108,000-square-foot warehouse in Sun Valley, while Triliad Development Inc. still has in the works its Moorpark West Studios project of a dozen soundstages with support buildings. Unlike those projects, Crimson Studios is further along in the process and will capture the growing amount of television work in the area. Reilly’s background was in real estate, not entertainment, until he and business partner Davis bought Valencia Studios in November for $19.3 million. The 6-acre parcel at 26030 Avenue Hall in the Valencia Industrial Center has six soundstages ranging from 6,000 to 13,000 square feet. The entire facility has been rented out to CBS drama “NCIS,” which has filmed there for more than 11 seasons. Other shows that filmed there include “JAG,” “Moonlighting” and “Power Rangers.” “They can do multiple shows there but with ‘NCIS’ being a big production they take the whole thing,” Reilly explained. He described Valencia Studios as being more of “a four-wall deal” in that it provides the space and the production company brings the cameras, lights and support services. That differs from Crimson Studios, which is a full-service facility that will provide everything a production needs, including post-production facilities. “It is the kind of place you drive in to work in the morning and when you leave you actually go home rather than going to other facilities,” Conlan said. After Reilly and Davis bought Valencia Studios, they were looking for other opportunities in soundstages. They had gone out to Glendale Studios, which is where they met Conlan and Yousefian, but were not able to work out any deal. As the pair looked around to see what else would be available, they came across the Chatsworth property. The building there had several benefits – close to the entertainment hubs of Burbank and Hollywood, high ceilings and plenty of parking. They were not looking specifically for a site in the San Fernando Valley but did want to stay within the 30-mile zone, a designation used to determine union wages for crew members, Reilly said. “There wasn’t anything magical about being on this street,” he added. “It happened to be the right building in the right location.” With blueprints of the building in hand, Reilly and the others did a preliminary layout and figured how many stages could fit inside, and the number of dressing rooms, control rooms and accessory rooms needed. “It penciled out pretty well from a space layout consideration,” Reilly said. Flexibility has been designed into the facility. There are moveable walls between the three large stages that can create up to a 30,000-square-foot filming area. Outside the stages are the engineering rooms that will contain a wall of monitors and recording decks. The images and sound are then fed to a control room upstairs where the director can sit to watch the action. “It is a futuristic studio that is taking place now,” Conlan said. With parking at soundstages being at times a premium, Reilly found a place where that is not an issue. The building has a lot for up to about 200 vehicles. He arranged with the owner of an adjacent building to use part of that property for overflow parking, yielding a total of more than 300 spaces. Streaming video market After years in which television shows were leaving California to film in states with generous tax credits, the state stepped up by expanding its own program from $100 million a year to $330 million and adding new types of projects eligible to receive the credits. As of June, 12 television series have relocated back to the state since the expanded tax credit program began in the 2015-16 fiscal year. But it’s not only the tax credit program creating the boom in television production. Another major factor are the streaming services – Netflix, Hulu and Amazon among them – making their own original content. And as Conlan’s partner Yousefian pointed out, all that content needs to be shot somewhere. “They are not going to build studios so they farm it out to the producers who go out and shoot in locations like this,” Yousefian said of Crimson Studios. Gary Onyshko, chief executive of Real to Reel Inc., a Van Nuys brokerage that markets properties for filming, is capitalizing on the scarcity of soundstages by offering warehouse conversions and soundstage alternatives. An example of the former is a Tarzana property that Onyshko signed for five months for a television series produced by a major studio. The space had previously been used for MTV teen comedy show “Awkward.” “It has two large warehouses, supporting office space and an abundance of parking, which is kind of hard to find in the Valley,” Onyshko said. Production companies appreciate using warehouses or soundstage alternatives because they can negotiate their own deals with vendors for lighting, electric and grip packages instead of having to pay for the equipment supplied by the soundstage owner, Onyshko explained. In contrast, Reitzin uses the package deal strategy at Avenue Six. While there are free amenities such as wireless internet access, fork lifts, production offices and lounge areas, the studio charges for equipment rental. “It is affordable and we are still a good price for a soundstage,” Reitzin said. Crimson, too, will use the equipment rental model. It allows the landlord to provide a full-service studio where the production company just needs to come in with the talent and their ideas, Reilly said. With other studios in the area fully booked to the point where productions go to warehouses, Crimson is ready for its close-up. “The expansion of this studio, you couldn’t find a better time for it,” Conlan said.