Fast-growing Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, with an enrollment of 600, has expanded to its second Loop campus since opening at the Burnham Building at 28 N. Dearborn four years ago.
The new campus at 33 N. LaSalle, which conveniently connects to the Burnham building by a throughway, adds 20,000-sq. ft. to the school. The second and third floors of what originally had been the classic high-ceiling headquarters of the American National Bank has been in the process of remodeling since the move-in two months ago.
Part of the new space is being converted into a 180×60-ft. shooting stage, with a 42-ft. clear span to the ceiling. The space also will have a 200-seat screening room and event space that will be available for public rentals.
Tribeca Flashpoint had lost the lease on NBC/5 former Merchandise Mart studios to make way for Google’s Chicago offices, says the school’s CEO/president Howard Tullman. Students used the NBC studios for TV production. They will continue to use Ch. 2’s studios at 22 W. Washington.
It only took a month for Tribeca Flashpoint to find the new space. “I knew these spaces existed in a couple of Loop buildings where big banks had grand open spaces and soaring ceilings. We began remodeling about two months after the previous tenant, the City of Chicago, moved out,” Tullman says.
The architectural firm for the new campus is A. Epstein & Sons, which also designed Tribeca Flashpoint’s original 125,000-sq. ft. Burnham Building campus and Barbara Pollack, designer of its interior, is doing the same on LaSalle St.
Tribeca Flashpoint also has an option to add 12,000-sq. ft. of third-floor office space and “a couple of more floors,” says Tullman. The lease runs until 2027, when the academy’s Burnham Center lease ends.
Last June, Chicago private equity firm Sterling Partners, the biggest investor in education in the world, acquired a majority stake in the academy. “We wanted a substantial partner,” says Tullman, given the school’s expansion and growth. It started with 100 visual arts students in 2008.
