The city of Roanoke is now designated as a media production development zone, which could bring in filmmakers and creatives to Roanoke.
The designation allows media production companies to receive a two-year exemption from state and local sales taxes related to construction, maintenance, expansion, improvement or renovation. The exemption was approved by Roanoke City Council at its March 10 meeting.
What happened?
Daniel McCarthy, the chief executive officer of FM, a company dedicated to equipping the creative community through music, footage, photo licensing and career support, asked Roanoke City Council to grant the sales tax exemption for the media production facility, which will be where Craft & Vine was located.
Council granted McCarthy the tax exemption for the renovations, alongside approving the city’s status as a media production development zone. Any other businesses that want to receive the two-year local sales tax exemption needs to get approval from City Council, McCarthy said.
“The goal [of the tax exemption] is to attract long-term production infrastructure, create jobs and grow the media industry in Texas," McCarthy said.
Over the next six months, FM plans to invest $4.2 million into renovating an existing three-story, 22,000-square-foot building located at 310 South Oak St. into a premier, high-tech production hub, according to city documents.
The facility will include:
The first floor will feature executive, production and editing suites, while the second floor will primarily be used for meeting and editing space, according to city documents.
The impact
An economic impact analysis completed by Roanoke staff estimated that the city will forgo approximately $59,080 in local sales taxes due to the exemption. Over the next five years, the facility will generate a net return of $72,540 for the city and over $3 million for the state, per city documents.
“We host a ton of events every year,” McCarthy said. “We bring creatives from all over the world, we have filmmakers that fly in, we’re hosting clients and artists here all the time. [It’s] about 1,000 creatives that we bring in and we’d like to do that in the city of Roanoke.”
Additionally, the facility is anticipated to bring 100 new jobs over the next five years, McCarthy said.
“With the popularity of the projects in Fort Worth and Midlothian with the filming of [television show] "The Chosen," which is very popular, and Taylor Sheridan’s projects, [city staff] feel that a project like this or supporting something like this would create a lot of synergy of what we’re looking to do on Oak Street as we continue to develop our identity as a city,” Economic Development Manager Siale Langi said.
There are no set dates for when the renovations will begin.
