The city of Chicago approved the purchase of land at 16th and State street on Sept. 11 for Columbia to begin building its proposed Media Production Center. The college has been working on obtaining the property for about two years, Doreen Bartoni, dean of the School of Media Arts, said.

 

The MPC is Columbia’s first newly constructed building and is set to be about 39,000 square feet in size. The college purchased the land for $200,000 from the city of Chicago, down from an estimated $3.2 million, said Alicia Berg, vice president of Campus Environment.

“The city thinks Columbia is an important institution in Chicago, both in terms of the function of the building and educating folks in the media industries,” Berg said. “This will be the most state-of-the-art film and media production facility in the city.”

The official groundbreaking is tentatively scheduled for early 2009, possibly in February if weather permits, Micki Leventhal, director of Media Relations, said. The building is slated to be finished by spring 2010. There will be a ceremonial groundbreaking, Leventhal said, but that date has yet to be determined.

Berg said the building blueprints were designed by Studio Gang Architects and will include the Lasky Arch that was once a fixture of Chicago’s “film row” on Wabash Avenue, which is what the Film Row Cinema on the eighth floor of the 1104 Center, 1104 S. Wabash Ave. was named after.

Berg said the city of Chicago sold Columbia the land at a discounted price and therefore “the city’s contribution to the MPC is selling the land $3 million less than it was appraised at.”

However, that discounted price did come with a separate price tag in public benefits, Berg said.

“The city actually negotiated [public benefits] as part of the $3 million contribution to Columbia,” Berg said. “One of the public benefits was the Lasky Arch, which is what we call it for shorthand. But the company’s name was the Famous Players Lasky Corportation, which was the precursor to Paramount Pictures.”

Berg said a building on the 1300 block of South Wabash Avenue was the original housing of the arch. The building was torn down to construct a high-rise and the arch was taken apart and will be reconstructed and displayed inside of the MPC.

Bartoni said a variety of students will be using the Media Production Center. The Film, Television and Interactive Arts and Media departments will all be working together in the new space. The building will include two sound stages and a motion capture studio.

“Those are three major spaces that we’ve never really had,” Bartoni said.

She said the group of students who will be using the motion capture studio the most is the IAAM Department, but the line that divides the professions has become almost invisible.

Bruce Sheridan, chair of the Film Department, said students will now have the opportunity to work with other students who have various degrees of knowledge contributing to a “real world” experience.

“In the real world where [students] are going to work in, they’re always around people who know different things than them. What the Media Production Center will mean is that it will truly model professional practice … ,” Sheridan said. “They’ll be alongside people who have done more than them, who’ve done less than them and be part of a true production culture that they can analyze and understand at their speed and on their terms.”

He said the construction of the new building will have limitless educational value and is “huge” for media students’ education.

“Now we’ll be able to build [the] state-of-the-art Media Production Center and teach our students in that environment year round, not just when the weather’s kind,” Sheridan said.

Bartoni said the MPC will also have a space to dock the new Media Production Truck to help television students learn how to do live remotes.

“Television students will have the opportunity to cover any live event that may happen in the Media Production Center,” Bartoni said. “We’ll also be teaching how to use the remote truck from one of the classrooms there so they can ease into [using the truck].”

Michael Niederman, chair of the Television Department, said it adds possibilities for using the new remote truck.

“We’ll be able to take the truck, pull it up and hook it into the building and allow us to use one of the sound stages in a multi-camera set-up in a very wonderful, efficient and easy manner,” he said.

Niederman said the new production center gives students a space that “the college has never really had.”

“[The MPC] has the kind of space we could only ever dream of before,” Niederman said. “It’s an incredible upgrade to the educational possibilities for everyone in the college.”