Firm Pictures Hollywood In Florida

By RICHARD MULLINSand WILLIAM MARCH The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jun 27, 2007

Florida's long-elusive dream of becoming a mini-Hollywood could get a boost from a land far, far away - Dubai.

Several Florida politicians have been touring executives from a Dubai-based Capital Plus Holding around Florida cities in hopes the Middle Eastern firm would pick Florida for a major new media production site.

Tampa is among several cities under consideration by the company, including Miami and Orlando.

The talks are in preliminary stages, but if fruitful, they would marry Dubai's drive to diversify its economy beyond oil wealth with Florida's dream of building some economic horsepower through more media production.

State Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Tampa, confirmed that representatives of Capital Plus met with Gov. Charlie Crist Monday, and Ambler, a lawyer who's representing Capital Plus, met with Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan.

Ambler said the company has partnerships with film production companies and is scouting for a site for a major production studio.

Ambler said he doesn't know of firm plans for a film company to occupy the facility but said Capital Plus is scouting for a location just as a shopping center developer might look for a site before getting commitments from stores to be tenants.

Ambler said the company, which does many kinds of development projects, has at least two other possible projects in mind for Florida.

One would be a "global real estate investment institute," which Ambler described as "an educational institute for people about real estate development and investing, including the first ever international exchange for real estate investments," an exchange like the Nasdaq, which would tradein real estate investment trusts and other investments, he said.

Ambler said he wasn't free to describe any other potential projects. But he said the size of the investments "would be very large, for Florida" and could include about 8,000 jobs altogether.

Ambler, whose practice includes entertainment and sports law, said he became involved with Capital Plus through a client of his, a Florida company named McDonald Hospitality, which may form a partnership with Capital Plus.

Ambler arranged the meeting with Crist and said it included Capital Plus board Chairman Mohamed Saleh. He said he visited Hagan "as a courtesy to give him a heads-up" about the company's interest and is arranging contacts between company officials and other local governments.

He saidthat there may be competition among cities for the facility. "They're looking throughout Florida."

Ambler said he was limited in discussing the project because he didn't want to create barriers to land acquisition or negotiations for the project.

"The word that Florida has successfully put out is that we are trying to develop our film and entertainment business, trying to build the next great Hollywood of the country," Ambler said, describing Capital Plus's interest in Florida.

Hagan said his meeting with Ambler lasted about 10 minutes and that he considered Ambler's proposal "very intriguing."

He said if the project came to the Tampa area, it could mean as many as 5,000 jobs.

Capital Plus

Capital Plus is a Dubai-based corporation that specializes in a range of real estate and media projects, with offices in London; Beirut; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Manama, Bahrain.

Some of the company's projects include the new "Media Hotel," a $272 million, four-star hotel in Dubai's Studio City area made in partnership with Windham Ramada Hotels and catering to the digital multimedia traveler.

Capital Plus also has some of its own media production properties, including the "Aqariya" television news channel, with English and Arabic versions, that specializes in news about real estate investment and projects.

Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates and one of the world's fastest-growing markets. Recently, the region's politicians and businesspeople have been working to diversify their economy beyond natural gas and oil wealth, investing in tourism, real estate development and even fashion.

During the past decade, Dubai has become a sort-of secular playground for the ultra-rich in the Middle East and built a string of over-the-top restaurants and tourist attractions, including a massive, refrigerated indoor ski slope and a sail-shaped hotel that's considered one of the world's finest.

The Dubai government investment arm, Istithmar, has branched out to acquire fashion assets and just this month spent more than $800 million to purchase the "Barney's" fashion brand of Jones Apparel Group.

Elusive Dream

Matching an outside investor with Florida's media production hopes would fulfill an attractive yet stubbornly elusive dream, said Christopher Steinocher, chief operating officer of the Tampa Bay Partnership economic development group.

"We have a lot of that talent here, and all we need are larger production facilities," Steinocher said. "The challenge is that there are places literally around the globe who offer just buckets of cash to do films there instead - New Mexico, Canada, Ireland - lots of places."

To be sure, many cities hope to carve out some Hollywood business for themselves, and cities such as Vancouver and Toronto regularly stand in as locations for U.S. cities in movies. Meanwhile, more film producers are looking beyond the United States for low-cost locations such as Eastern Europe to shoot movies. And Tampa would have a long way to develop before it could boast the tens of thousands of creative movie employees that call Hollywood or New York home.

Florida still gets its fair share of "location shoots" when movie producers need a good beach scene or distinctive architecture, Steinocher said. But those production companies tend to come and go with each project. Steinocher holds out more hope that the governor and Legislature will make more money available to develop Florida's film market, both with cash and local investments, to make the area more attractive to producers and multimedia companies.

Reporter Anthony McCartney contributed to this report. Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.