Children’s Museum Vacancy Creates Industry Opportunity

The long-delayed Children’s Museum of Los Angeles has found a new life of sorts in Hollywood. Never completed because of funding problems the stylish building out at the Hansen Dam in the east San Fernando Valley is now owned by the city and made available as a location for television and feature film shoots. This and other empty properties – the Lincoln Heights Jail, for instance – are being marketed to production companies as part of an overall strategy to stem the loss of filming to other states. A year ago the television drama “Bones” filmed at the museum for three days, and in December the David Fincher-helmed comedy-drama feature film “The Social Network,” about the founding of Facebook used the space for three days. The museum and other city properties are available at virtually no cost to film although for the museum staff will be paid to open and close the building. Empty buildings offer other benefits as well. “They make great locations because you can work around the clock,” said Paul Adley, president of FilmLA, the nonprofit agency coordinating on-location filming. “It is one of the best things about the city’s offerings.” The children’s museum had been located in downtown until 2000 until it closed for a lack of space. Fundraising then started for a new museum in the Lake View Terrace neighborhood that resulted in the 57,000-square-foot facility. While raising money for the project was always a struggle, as time passed donor became more difficult to come by. The proposed completion date of 2007 came and went. Then the opening was delayed until 2009 and then again until 2010. Delays only added to the cost, which was could not be met with the donations already raised. An estimated $2 million would be needed to operate the museum once it opened. Bankruptcy Finally, in April 2009, the museum declared bankruptcy having failed to raise the money needed to finish the building. That a major donor was being sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was of no help either. City Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose district includes Lake View Terrace, said the goal is to have the building used as a museum. Because there is state money involved in the project, the city is working on getting the okay from Sacramento to extend the deadline of when the facility needs to be a functioning museum. So in the interim production companies are welcome. “There will be a period of time where the building will not have a specified use and therefore there is space available for filming,” Alarcon said. Both the film office of the city’s parks and recreation department and FilmLA are getting the museum (and other city-owned sites) before location scouts. FilmLA will include the site in its LocoScout database. It is just a part of a larger strategy embraced by the city to do more to keep film and television production in Southern California. According to statistics from Film LA, on-location production for film, television and commercials decreased by 19 percent in 2009 when compared to the year before. The number of feature films filming on-location in the region in particular has dramatically dropped over the past 10 years. (Those numbers, however, do not include filming on soundstages.) Considering the size and the emptiness of the museum building, Alarcon expressed surprise that it wasn’t used more often. From his knowledge about children’s museums they are typically designed for traveling exhibits, which is why ample space is available to build sets, Adley said. Alarcon is also working on creating a film commission that would market the city as place for filming.