East Hampton Studio Sold To Emmy Winner

By Dan Rattiner

One of the most well known buildings on eastern Long Island, the 22,000-square-foot East Hampton Studios, is being sold for $1.484,000. The new owners are Emmy-award-winning producer Mitchell Kreigman and his partner, Michael Wudyka of the Enclave Inn in Wainscott. They intend to turn this into a major production studio, not only for Mitchell Kreigman's productions, but for everyone in the industry who needs such a facility for the creation of film and TV.

Kreigman, if you are not familiar with his work, is the creator of such TV productions as "Big Big World," "Bear in the Big Blue House" and "Clarissa Explains it All." Currently he is producing the new episodes for the second year of "Big Big World" - the network PBS has contracted for another 40 episodes - and he is currently producing another pre-school show, a feature and a project for the BBC.

"We are now renting a space in the LTV public television studio in East Hampton," Kreigman told me. "We do animation, audio, recordings and green screen. And now, we need a bigger facility."

Both the LTV television studio and the giant East Hampton Studio are directly adjacent to one another on Industrial Road in East Hampton on a six-acre site, all built by the same man, Fraser Dougherty, who had a dream. Twenty years ago, he dreamt of providing this town with a state of the art TV studio for the public access channel on Cablevision and so he built the 10,000 square foot LTV Studio building in which neophyte producers would have a place to learn their trade, do their work and have it shown on TV. It would also be a place where local programming, such as news, documentaries and talk shows, could take place, 24 hours a day. LTV, as channel 20, remains a great public service to this day.

The much larger East Hampton Studio, built next door about ten years ago, was another of Fraser's dreams. His initial plan was to create a studio about the size of the mammoth Pinewood Studios in England, where for many years filmmakers from around the world came to produce their epics. With a similar facility right here in East Hampton, Fraser felt that they could come here. He named the studio here Pinewood West. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Many actors, producers and directors had just moved here, including Steven Spielberg, Director Barry Sonnenfeld and Sidney Lumet. They came down and looked at the facilities and spoke glowingly of them, but when push came to shove, they found it impossible to bring the necessary union workers to the site from the City, without compensating them for huge amounts of overtime.

Several small films were made here, including some of the work for Cecilla Peck and Barbara Kopple's television's documentary, Once Upon a Time in the Hamptons. Other than that, no major blockbuster movies were made there.

Eventually, Fraser changed the name of the place to East Hampton Studios and rented out space to Plum TV for a while and then to a production company for a film that Alec Baldwin was to produce, direct and star in, but it was never finished. In its most recent incarnation, East Hampton Studios became the locale for numerous other public events, including the Scope '07 Art Exhibit, the Bard Music Festival of the Hamptons and various other musical events, comedies, local theatre ballet and fundraising events. Last year, Fraser Dougherty married Eleanor Leonard, the director of what was then the Hamptons Music Festival, there.

In many ways, the impending sale seems to be a fulfillment of Fraser Dougherty's original media studio dream. Where Fraser, a local man, has only limited Hollywood contacts, Mitchell Kreigman, a well known and respected film and TV producers, does.

"My goal is to use the space for all sorts of media productions," Kreigman said. "Fraser had the foresight to see this vision. We think we can execute it. We will be open for business to provide space and production facilities for anything media-related that anyone can bring to us."

He said that his present production house, which is only doing the work he sells to the networks, will form the basis for this expansion. But he did point out that his production house, which has been out here for three years, has pumped millions of dollars into this community, with employees working as carpenters, stagehands, caterers and so forth. And then the people coming out here need restaurant and hotel facilities while they are working here.

"We're putting a new camera crane in there. We intend to expand as a major off-season industry in the Hamptons, providing jobs and excitement to the area."

"What about IN season?" I asked.

"We relax. We stay stuck in traffic. We enjoy the Hamptons."

I asked whether the facility will be able to be used for some of the local public events that it has hosted in recent years.

"I can say that we will not be a catering hall, but anything media-related, we will do," he replied. We will look to our mission statement but I think we can film concerts, we can do TV for plays and music events. I don't know, at this point, what we will and won't be doing at the studio, but if it is media-related, we will do it. We will always support the community."

Kreigman noted that the Sony Sound Studio 54 in New York did all the music work for the TV show "Unplugged." He said he personally had played in a band that performed in a sound studio in the city. It was not unusual. He said they were still working things about what they could and could not do with the town.

When contacted by this reporter, Fraser Dougherty said he understands the plan calls for breaking up the great room in the East Hampton Studio into several smaller rooms.

"The great room is 166 feet long by 100 feet wide by six stories high. It has served as a community facilitiy now for the past three years. All that will be lost if this plan goes through. The Studio was well on its way to becoming a town treasure."

Although Fraser owns the property, for complicated legal reasons, he is opposed to the sale. And he hopes the town will not approve of it.

At his studio in the LTV building next door two years ago, Kreigman was picketed by union workers for almost a year because he wouldn't pay union wages for writers and other workers who were hoping to work for "Big Big World." Kreigman was not willing to pay union wages because, he said, that with his new techniques, part of production would require union workers, but part of it that involved a special kind of animation would not. Eventually, a compromise was reached.

"What are you going to name the studio?" I asked. "Big, Big World?"

"I was thinking Big, Big, BIG World. Actually, no, we haven't come up with a name just yet. But when we do, we will make a major announcement."

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