Will we all be living in Manor together by 2009?

[Dave]

REAL ESTATE

'Creative talent' will anchor $1.5 billion neighborhood
By Shonda Novak, M.B. Taboada
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Monday, April 16, 2007

It sounds like a Hollywood fantasy: A big-time movie studio, capable of producing special-effects blockbusters. A 50,000-square-foot soundstage and recording studios. An outdoor amphitheater with seating for more than 70,000. Moviemakers and musicians rubbing shoulders at the same colossal production facility.

Villa Muse, a $1.5 billion mixed-use project to be announced today, would have it all, developers say. But will it really happen, especially when so many other plans for a big studio have cropped up in the past and come to naught? This time, developers promise, it's the real deal.
And if all goes as planned, Villa Muse would transform 681 acres in eastern Travis County, near the Texas 130 toll road about 10 miles south of Manor, into a small city 15 minutes from downtown Austin.

Developers said the completed project would provide jobs for 8,000 people and have about 8,500 residents. The residential neighborhoods would have several distinct styles, such as brownstones or Craftsman bungalows. And potential buyers would be told that their home could end up as part of a movie set, developers said.

The anchor would be the $125 million, 200-acre Villa Muse Studios, with facilities for film, television, advertising, music and video game makers, said Jay Podolnick, a 25-year Austin music producer and engineer.

The studios would "address the needs of our thriving creative industries in Texas while attracting business that has been out of reach and forced to go elsewhere," Podolnick said.

The master-planned community would give Texas a "centralized location where creative talent can come together to cross-pollinate," Podolnick said.
Podolnick has a contract to buy the land from Carpenter & Associates, an Austin-based real estate development and investment firm whose president, Jim Carpenter, is a project partner. Carpenter's company also will oversee construction of roads, streets, utilities and drainage services for the development.
Villa Muse has an option on an adjoining 330 acres, which could bring the project to more than 1,000 acres, Carpenter said.
"You're literally creating a village, a city," he said.

Bob Hudgins, director of the Texas Film Commission, acknowledged that his office has a "very high" stack of plans to build big studios in Austin. But he and Carpenter said this project is different.

Previous plans lacked "the correct team of people and talent, and they didn't have the financial resources," Carpenter said. "Villa Muse has all of those, and they have the credibility I had not seen in other parties . . . to pull this whole thing off."
Some say it won't be easy.

Pete Dwyer, a developer in the Manor area, said that while he thinks Villa Muse is a great idea for Central Texas, "I wouldn't want to have to foot the bill."
Such endeavors "inevitably involve large sums of money," so much that "they end up needing to be talked about in the same breath with major public investment," Dwyer said.

But financing for the first phase of Villa Muse has been secured from unnamed private equity investors, Carpenter said. He declined to disclose the price of the land or discuss financing for subsequent phases.

Construction on the project's amphitheater could start in two months, Carpenter said, and be done by the end of 2008. A venue that size could have accommodated the Rolling Stones, who played at Zilker Park in October.

Currently, summer tours, such as Ozzfest and the Warped Tour, and stadium-filling concerts come no closer to Austin than the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Selma, outside San Antonio, partly because of the lack of a venue.

Charles Attal, a principal in C3, the new booking concern associated with his own Charles Attal Productions, thinks such venues can be pricey.

"I think we could get tours such as Ozzfest, but the whole amphitheater model is not really where the industry is headed right now," he said. "Something that large really needs to be a multiuse facility, with something like a sports team attached, to sustain the revenue to support the note."

Today's announcement follows Thursday's vote in the Texas House to provide state incentives for film and television production. Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, wrote the legislation, and a similar bill is pending in the Senate.

The aim is to help Texas compete with such moviemaking hot spots as Toronto, as well as with neighboring states. But the Villa Muse developers said their project does not hinge on possible Senate approval, and Villa Muse will not receive any of those possible funds.

However, the developers supported the bill, said Elizabeth Christian, Villa Muse's public relations consultant.

Texas has long lost money because of the lack of filming and producing facilities, Hudgins said. Austin Studios, the city's primary filmmaking site, is geared largely toward small, independent movies rather than the big-budget flicks that would be filmed at Villa Muse, he said.

"It's really going to make it easier to draw in the big projects," Hudgins said. "Right now, we can't handle the big shows. . . . We can't even chase after that work."

People will be living in the community within the next three years, and the project is expected to be completed in five to seven years, said Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, vice president of strategic development for Villa Muse.

Water will come from the Manville Water Supply Corp., Carpenter said, and Hornsby Bend Utility Co. will provide wastewater services.
As for the logistics of living in a place that doubles as a movie set, "anyone buying at Villa Muse would know what the deal was before ever purchasing a house," Christian said.

"After living in Los Angeles for many years in a neighborhood that was used frequently for movies, it is not a problem and, in fact, is fun," she said.
Dwyer, however, questioned whether people would want to live next to a "loud and noisy concert venue unless they're employed there, and then they could do the pub crawl home."

Christian said that the studio complex would buffer the amphitheater from the housing.

"The Hollywood Bowl is smack in the middle of Hollywood, and it is the coolest place to live, ever," she said. "Everybody wants to live near there."


snovak@statesman.com; 445-3856
mtaboada@statesman.com

Additional material from staff writer Joe Gross.

[beardedlamb]

ha ha. manville.