As Gov. Phil Murphy continues his push to woo film and television production to New Jersey, the state economic development authority today approved a partnership with a $1+ billion studio complex including 22 sound stages set to rise in the Bergen Point neighborhood of Bayonne, New Jersey at the site of a former Texaco oil refinery.
The project will break ground this fall, said Arpad Busson, the New York-based French financier whose Togus Urban Renewal is spearheading the project along with Rothschild in the UK and New York-based Moore Group. He said construction will take two years. Called 1888 Studios, after the year New Jersey-native Thomas Edison filed a patent for the motion picture camera, the 1.5 million square feet structure designed by architecture firm Gensler to evoke imagery of Golden Age Hollywood, will span 55 acres and include comprehensive on-site production services, as well as a waterfront park and promenade accessible to the public.