County Commissioner Meeting on Wednesday Could Seal the Deal
TELLURIDE – A team of television producers and key players from the Colorado Film Commission converge on Telluride today to enter a round of last-minute negotiations with local officials regarding whether to film a proposed new television drama series for the Hallmark Channel in and around Telluride.
The family-friendly original 1-hour drama series, titled When Calls the Heart, is a sort of Little House on the Prairie, set in a historic mining town. It follows the story of a wealthy young woman from “Back East” who moves to a frontier mining town to teach school and falls in love with a handsome lawman.
The show is to be produced by Brian Bird, along with his partner, Michael Landon, Jr. (son of the famed producer of Little House on the Prairie), and Brad Krevoy (the producer of Dumb and Dumber which was also filmed in Colorado) through their joint venture, Frontier Productions.
The producers estimate they will spend about $8 million in Telluride this summer alone on six pilot episodes, with locals hired to do much of the set construction and even some of the acting. If the series extends an additional seven episodes in Season 1, it is estimated that approximately $17 million will be spent locally in San Miguel County and in Telluride in total on the production this year.
Ultimately the show could provide up to a thousand new jobs to the area and inject $75 million into the local economy over the next five years, Bird said.
State and local officials including Governor John Hickenlooper, State Film Commissioner Donald Zuckerman, Telluride Mayor Stu Fraser and Telluride Film Commission co-founder Tim Territo have all played key roles in wooing the series to Telluride.
The producers propose to build a film-set recreation of the Town of Telluride as it appeared in the early 1900s, on a “Super Fund” mining reclamation site owned by the Idarado Mining Company and controlled by San Miguel County.
The deal hinges on San Miguel County Commissioners giving their blessing to the concept. Bird and his colleagues seek a special-use permit or a temporary re-zoning of the Idarado parcel. The matter will be discussed at a County Commissioners meeting on Wednesday morning, May 15.
“If we get the okay from the County Commissioners on Wednesday, the project may be a go,” said Territo, who has been working at a fever pitch for the past two weeks to pull the deal together. “There is so much riding on this, it makes me very nervous. I am not sleeping at night.”
As outlined in a proposal which has been widely distributed to local officials over the past several days, the construction of the film sets would take place between June 1 and July 22 for use in the eight-week production of six one-hour episodes of the series, starting around Aug. 1.
The sets would be fabricated off-site and erected in sections on the Idarado tailings pile. Following production during the first season of the show, and in succeeding seasons if the Hallmark Channel chooses to continue the show, producers would remove the sets and store them off-site. When the series concludes, the land would be returned to its current state under the supervision of approved environmental professionals.
Hallmark has the right to renew the series for an additional four seasons of 13 episodes each. An estimated $75 million would go into the making of the series during that time. The producers also estimate they will need to employ an estimated 100 weekly workers each season, plus an additional 250 workers and extras on as-needed basis.
During the production cycles the production team would require logistics and services from local Telluride hotels, catering, restaurant, transportation and equipment rentals, and other services organizations.
Territo and fellow Telluride Film Commission co-founders Ted Wilson and Thom Carnevale have worked for several years promoting Telluride as a location for film and television projects. The commission started as a means to diversify Telluride’s economy and promote the town when the housing market bottomed out.
The income brought to Telluride by film and television projects is “good clean money,” Territo said. “It doesn’t involve selling real estate. People come and go, and the pictures last forever.”
Among the Telluride Film Commission’s recent achievements is a Coors beer commercial shot in downtown Telluride, which just started airing this week. But the proposed new Hallmark series represents a whole new pinnacle of achievement for the commission.
“You can’t pay for that kind of advertising,” Territo said. “It’s as good an opportunity for Telluride as it gets. These opportunities only come by very rarely. I would hate to see it not happen.”
Territo began wooing the project after a friend showed him a recent article about the proposed series in the Aspen Times; the article stated that both Aspen and Telluride were being considered as possible locations for the show.
Territo, a professional film location scout, invited the show’s producers to Telluride and gave them a whirlwind tour. “They fell in love with it,” he said. “They really had a feeling they could shoot it here.”
While spectacularly scenic, the location on the west end of town where the series producers want to build their film-set poses a unique challenge, given that it is the site of a massive mining reclamation project. However, officials from both the Idarado Mining Company and the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety (DRMS) have indicated that they are “on board” with the concept, Territo said.
“The town is also way on board,” he added. Local incentives sweetening the deal to entice the project come here include generously discounted room rates at The Peaks.
The State Film Commission, meanwhile, has offered $1.5 million in additional incentives to convince the project’s producers to film the series in Colorado. At this point, if Telluride doesn’t get the show, it will go to Alberta, Canada, Territo said.
New legislation passed by Colorado lawmakers last year offers much better incentives now for films and television projects – up to 20 percent cash back if producers spend over $1 million in the state.
Colorado’s film incentives have gone up at a time when those offered by surrounding states such as New Mexico are going down.
The proposed Hallmark series, with its multi-million dollar budget, could stand to benefit significantly from the incentives.
The Colorado Film Commission “really wants to show everyone that the incentives are working,” Territo said. “They can play a huge role.”
