New Haven Independent

The investors have won a federal auction to purchase the waterfront land where the Stratford Army Engine Plant was closed 12 years ago.

The group — a limited liability corporation called “Hollywood East/Area 51” — is paying $9.612 million to buy the property next to Sikorsky Memorial Airport. After an environmental clean-up, “the largest independent digital motion picture studio complex in North America” will rise there, declared Allen Christopher (pictured), the moving force behind the project.

(Click here to read the federal General Services Administration release issued Monday about the sale of the property, which was renamed “Point Stratford.”)

In a previous life, Christopher was one half of a Cleveland late-night TV sci-fi program hosting duo called “Frank and Drac.” More recently, he helped state legislators craft a program to draw film companies to Connecticut with tax breaks.

House Speaker Jim Amann says the program is turning Connecticut into “Hollywood East” — hence the name of the new corporation’s effort.

Allen Christopher said his group plans to make Hollywod East the year-round 1.7 million square-foot “anchor” for the state’s burgeoning movie and digital media industry. He envisions luring producers from around the world with “approximately 30 soundstages ranging in size from 2,500 square feet to 45,000 square feet with support services, production offices and commissary all located within the same facility.”

As for the “Area 51” part of the partnership’s name…

Sci Fi Signals

The last time the Independent checked in with Christopher, he was heading a partnership launching “Area 51,” a tech-age UHF station. The partnership was called “Attention Earthlings LLC” then. The station will combine old-style horror/ sci-fi flicks with mass-participation games that people will be able to play live (for cash prizes) from their televisions, computers, or cell phones.

After an extended journey through the galaxy of government bureaucracies, the team did manage to lease space atop New Haven’s East Rock from which to beam the station’s programming. It got a 15-year license in November. The plan now is to begin broadcasting this coming Halloween and to go straight to a digital signal, which will reached from New Haven to Bridgeport.

The partnership’s plan evolved into the new Hollywood East vision that triumphed Monday in the federal auction for the Stratford land. The plan now is to base Channel 51 in the new Stratford Point complex, a smaller entry in a much broader digital media universe. (The station would have a New Haven satellite office.)

Allen’s team will be responsible for an environmental clean-up at the property. It raised all the money for the $9.6 million purchase price. Now it needs to raise more — Christopher declined to say how much money — for the environmental clean-up and building the complex.

The state’s tax incentive program, considered the country’s most generous, should help.

“This fits perfectly with the speaker’s vision of how to build this industry,” Larry Perosino, spokesman for state House Speaker Amann, said Tuesday.

“Just last year the film tax credits were expanded from just movie production to digital media and infrastructure investment. It’s already paying off with the move of Blue Sky Studios to Connecticut, the expansion of nbcports.com to Stamford, and now Hollywood East/Area 51.”

Allen Christopher is the president and chairman of the project. His partners include Ed Natera, who founded New Haven’s N-Tech Systems; New Haven jeweler Richard Sykes; and NYU real estate professor Mauuro Gabriele. Christopher said many of the investors wish to remain anonymous (which an LLC allows them to do). The general counsel is former Democratic State Chairman Ed Marcus. Marcus is not an investor in Hollywood East, according to Allen. Allen has engaged HRP Associates and the law firm of Brown Rudnick to work on the environmental end of the project.

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