Plan to Build Film Studios Here Generating Lots of Discussion

A group called the Texas Film Corridor wants to build western movie sets and a soundstage in Fayette County.

Developers behind the project met with several local officials and interested parties in Schulenburg on Wednesday, March 27. Two of the three properties where the project would be built are located near Schulenburg.

The Schulenburg Sticker published a story last week about that meeting, and public reaction has been mixed.

“We are going to be building a series of filming locations within Fayette County, as long as we can get in agreeable terms with everyone in the area,” said Robert Norris of Creative Innovation Development, one of the companies involved in the Texas Film Corridor. “We don’t want to be invasive. These filming locations would be some mock western towns. One will be a pre-1876 style western town, and the other will be a post-1876 style western town. We’ll have some other tertiary locations like a hunting cabin or a farm. We’ll be using the locations to actually have a farm growing food and cattle on the land.”

Norris said he and his partners intend to initially invest $58 million into the three planned properties in Fayette County.

One of the locations will be a soundstage and production area. It will include an amphitheater with an IMAX screen. Norris said the facility would offer movie screenings to the public when it’s not being used for film productions.

The developers are attempting to purchase three properties in Fayette County: a tract of land near the corner of Hertel Rd. and the Interstate 10 feeder road near Schulenburg, another tract of property along Seidel Rd. in the High Hill area, and a third tract along Post Oak Rd. north of La Grange.

“We want to bring the film industry to Texas,” Norris said. “We would add jobs that pay an average of $86,000 a year. Then there are so many indirect jobs like catering, hotels, clothing services, vehicle services, rentals.”

Pct. 4 Commissioner Drew Brossmann, whose territory covers the properties near Schulenburg and High Hill, attended the meeting two weeks ago. Brossmann said he strongly opposes the development.

“I’ve had a ton of calls, not only from residents who live out in the county, but also in town, and business owners in Schulenburg,” Brossmann said. “There has not been one single person who contacted me and was for it. Nobody wants anything like that coming to the community. They don’t want stuff from California coming here and changing the way the community is, changing our way of life here.”

Brossmann said the constituents he spoke with do not think the community can handle the growth that such a facility would bring to the area.

Brossmann said the developers told him that the largest film productions would bring a maximum of 1,000 to 1,500 people to the area.

“If you bring 1,000 to 1,500 people to High Hill, that’s going to be invasive,” he said.

“The reason they’re coming to Texas is because they completely ruined the state of California,” Brossmann added.

In an interview with the Record last week, Norris said his business is a veteranowned, Texas-based business.

“A lot of the companies we’re dealing with are all Texas- based,” Norris said.

Last year, Schulenburg ISD voters approved a construction bond package that included $12.3 million for a performing arts center to expand the school’s theater program.

“We’re very much interested in giving back to the community and making it so that our young people can enter this business and not have to go out of state,” Norris said.

Schulenburg Mayor Connie Koopmann said she opposes the development.

“We don’t have enough employees for the businessess we have now,” Koopmann said. “Where are we going to come up with the employees to staff those facilities? I don’t think we’re ready for any kind of growth in that area.

“We don’t have the hotel space, we don’t have the restaurants,” she added. “It’s sort of like the Olympics. You have to build all this stuff to accommodate those people. We just don’t have that.”

Pct. 1 Commissioner Jason McBroom said a resident on Post Oak Rd. contacted him to enquire about the development. McBroom said he is trying to learn more about the project. However, he said private property rights generally prohibit the county from telling landowners how they may use their property.

Norris told the Record that his partners want to keep most of the land in farm and ranch production for the types of wide-open scenes they want to film on those locations.

“That’s going to preserve the landscape more than dividing it up into two-acre tracts,” McBroom said. “You’d have a film crew with 130 acres versus two-acre tracts and 200 neighbors.”

Norris spoke about concerns that the filming facility would intrude on the peaceful countryside.

“The whole purpose of a production is to be private,” he said. “If they’re doing anything that will make a ruckus, they will coordinate weeks in advance with the families around there to make sure they’re taken care of.”

Several officials we spoke with in the Schulenburg area raised doubts about the two properties there selling due to negative public attention. However, the Record learned that other real estate firms have since contacted the film project developers to show them other properties that are for sale in Fayette County.