Harbor Island Studios, the region’s only publicly-owned stage, has new operators.
Kirk Nordenstrom and Kris Flink, the Executive Director and Director of Operations of the local film nonprofit CREATE48, will officially oversee facilities, operations, and productions. The news was officially announced on Tuesday morning by King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, providing another temporary reprieve for the studio.
However, how long the duo can operate the space is still in limbo.
Nordenstrom already bears one tattoo for a film project his nonprofit helps run, the 48 Hour Film Project, a contest where filmmakers have two days to make a film. He told The Stranger he intends to ink the colorful Harbor Island wave logo onto his skin to mark the new development. But whether the space will last as long as a tattoo, a famously permanent thing, remains an open question.
The space had been in purgatory for seven months. It managed to survive funding uncertainty after getting a reprieve from King County budget cuts last November that would have been a death sentence for the studio. But it still needed someone new to run the ship because the county doesn’t want to pay for it through the general fund and wants it to be self-sufficient.
Zahilay determined he no longer wanted any funding for the studio to come from the general fund.
With a finite amount of time and money from the county to fund Harbor Island Studios, the race was on to find someone to take over.
“I’m glad we were able to find a nonprofit partner to continue momentum for the community while we work with stakeholders to develop a long-term strategy that supports access to affordable film and production space in our region,” Zahilay said in a release. “We’re excited that CREATE48 Media Network will activate and operate this valuable studio space over the next year, bringing more stories to life while also empowering creatives and creating pathways into film and media careers.”
Harbor Island Studios is still living on borrowed time. The new end date for bookable projects at the studios is June 30, 2027. Consult your calendar—that’s a little less than a year, so, not a long time. Both Nordenstrom and Flink hope that they might be able to make the case for an extension during check-ins with the county every three months.
What could be a really helpful bargaining chip? Harbor Island booking a big production or feature film for months beyond the end date. If Mel Eslyn (Biosphere) and Duplass Brothers Productions came calling, Nordenstrom and Flink would want to accommodate that.
In the meantime, there is plenty of room for Harbor Island Studios to grow and drive down costs. The duo intends to expand what projects the studios can host so it’s not sitting empty. One helpful change could be which county entity manages the studios. Nordenstrom expressed hope it could be brought under the county’s Facilities Management Division instead of the county’s Solid Waste division, which owns the land. The handoff could lower rent and allow them to even potentially get site control (meaning they could build and make improvements). “The goal is that this will be a self-sustaining, positive, revenue-generating thing.”
However, there is no guarantee of anything from the county beyond the next year of operations. In an email to The Stranger, Callie Craighead, press secretary for Zahilay’s office, confirmed the lease ends next June, but wrote “the county can’t guarantee access to the property beyond that date.” Craighead says Solid Waste will begin the process of selling the building and could do so at any time.
“That process can have varying timelines, and we will not know who may purchase the property,” Craighead says “Any new owner would decide next steps with tenants.”
Based on his understanding of the current real estate market, Nordenstrom doesn’t think there will be a sale anytime soon.
“I think this facility is going to be owned by the county for a very long time,” Nordenstrom said
Under the current rent agreement, the new operator will have some wiggle room to ramp up production, but will need to start getting projects into the space quickly since time in this case is almost literally money.
Flink, a project manager with 26 years of experience, says they’ve already begun sorting through the mountain of requests that accumulated from interested productions—including big features—while the space was in limbo. Those productions could begin work at the studios soon.
“Our concern is ramping back up and momentum and getting bookings in here to cover all of the operating costs,” Flink says. “The demand is big… I’m going to reach out to every single one of [the inquiries].”
The 117,000 square-foot facility has two sound stages and a third space for set construction, storage, or, occasionally for shooting scenes without sound. There’s a lot that can be done in these studios and a lot that’s been done in the past, including the upcoming 20th season of the reality show Married at First Sight. Harbor Island Studios also birthed the cult comedy series Three Busy Debras, which shot there for two seasons.
Since the studios’ official launch in 2021, it’s hosted over 160 productions from Paramount, HBO, Amazon, and Netflix, as well as multiple independent shorts and features, commercials, and music videos.
Flink and Nordenstrom have big plans, such as partnering with local colleges to provide training programs for students. And they want it to be a fully operating studio space to help experienced crew stay here rather than having to move away. The potential end date, the fear it could be sold and knocked down for commercial warehouse space, and an unstable filmmaking landscape that’s seen a decline in domestic production pose serious challenges to those goals.
“I’m just really sick of watching friends develop their skills and then, boom, move off to Los Angeles, or Atlanta, or New York,” Nordenstrom says.
