Good to know wrt Dr. Bubble. Still, he does have a way with words.
We could never leave CA, since, as you mentioned, we also enjoy being in the thick of things with real estate and the entertainment industry.
As the article below references, my wife is involved in more productions than ever, since Hollywood is back, baby! The streaming services have become Hollywood gold.
Both industries are cyclical, but it’s fun to ride the wave while you can–as long as you also plan for the inevitable downside.
With Hollywood Production in Overdrive, the Soundstage Is a Hot Commodity
“The surge in new movies and TV shows has touched off a scramble for places to film. Empty office space, abandoned malls and even a shuttered Sears store—apparently all the world really is a stage.
There is one going up in Buffalo, and another planned for Missoula. The South Side of Chicago is getting one, and so are Seattle and Spokane. Oklahoma City just opened one, and Los Angeles is getting at least a half-dozen more.
In cities large and small, developers are building cavernous soundstages, rushing to fill a voracious demand for the space needed to make movies and TV shows. A scramble by studios and tech giants for programming to keep their streaming platforms fresh has touched off a building bonanza unlike any seen since the early days of the entertainment industry. Even abandoned malls are being eyed for the job.
“Developers are salivating,” said Tima Bell, a principal at Relativity Architects, a California-based firm. His team is building a soundstage in Canada and an entire campus in Atlanta—while also moving toward construction of six in Los Angeles. Approximately half of those sites were initially designated to be warehouses before investors pivoted toward soundstage use in the past year.
The capacity crunch is the result of a yearslong surge in production, but the stay-at-home orders that kept many people out of the office over the past year and a half increased the demand for content and kicked Hollywood into overdrive. The industry is now spending tens of billions of dollars to maintain a constant flow of movies and TV shows to keep subscribers hooked.”
