Councillors have called for St Albans to encourage investment from the film and television industries.
Last week, councillors on St Albans City & District Council’s strategy and resources committee met to consider plans from Hertfordshire Innovation Quarter (IQ) to spend £5m on projects in the area.
Herts IQ, the county’s Enterprise Zone, is part-owned by St Albans City & District Council. A recent economic study of south-west Hertfordshire concluded there was a “need to support a number of key growth sectors”, including film and TV, councillors were told.
Cllr Robert Donald said he had attended a presentation earlier this year on Hertfordshire’s film and TV industries that led him to “come away thinking we really could contribute to this if we had a bit of investment.”
Pointing to the recent Jubilee Square development, he said: “We’ve got offices here in the city centre, brand new offices, which are waiting to be let.
“I think there is an opportunity to get in there now and not just let Elstree have it all.
“We could provide some office space and make a virtual and useful link with Elstree and the film industry within Hertfordshire.”
Cllr Raj Visram suggested there was also a need in the industry for “open land” that could be used as “secure sites for all their vehicles and equipment”.
“We are bang in the middle of all the studios they would want to visit as well as locations in the area,” Cllr Visram said.
“The office space, I agree, that’s perhaps very suitable for start-ups, smaller production companies and so on, but the actual physical gear has to go somewhere and we could offer that too.”
Adam Wood, speaking on behalf of Herts IQ, said: “There’s a lot of potential.
“Even in the current fairly tough economic climate, film and TV is still doing well in Hertfordshire and certainly the major studios have got bookings for the next four or five years.
“What we are finding is there’s quite a lot of interest in not just film studios but all the wider ecosystem that supports film studios and the film industry in general.
“With Jubilee Square … we’ve got it on our Invest Hertfordshire website as a potential investment area and I was really pleased to hear that there’s clearly commercial interest in it.
“It’s the sort of building that could work for the wider, softer side of the film industry.”
Hertfordshire is currently home to studios including Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, BBC Studioworks, Elstree Studios and Sky Studios Elstree.
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