Limerick City and County Council have announced the purchase of the former Dell building in Castletroy for an estimated €6 million.
The council plans on turning the 350,000 square foot building into a giant production space to be leased by Ardmore Studios, which would provide much needed studio infrastructure in Ireland.
Discussions with Ardmore about the partnership are still ongoing, but are expected to be completed in a number of days.
Ardmore has been providing space for international productions for over 50 years.
The building was leased successfully during Limerick's year as City of Culture as the Culture Factory, and a number of large scale productions were staged there last year.
The purchase comes just weeks after a number of international producers, including Philip Lee, who produced 'The Dark Knight', visited Limerick scouting a number of locations for a new €130m science fiction movie entitled 'Inversion' which is currently in pre-production.
Limerick City Chief Executive Conn Murray said the purchase of the building is the first step in a strategy to create major studio facilities in Limerick which could also lead to major sustainable employment in the city.
He said there is a clear and urgent demand for large scale studio space and support buildings in Ireland, and many of the pre-conditions necessary for the creation of studios already exist in Limerick.
There is also growing interest in Ireland as a production location because of attractive tax incentives, but the potential cannot be fully exploited because of a shortage of large-scale production space.
In fact, Ardmore has had to turn away business in the past year because they did not have the required capacity.
The availability of large-scale film and television production space that could cater for pent up demand could assist Ireland's ambition to grow its international film production space.
This was identified in the Creative Capital report prepared for the Department of Arts a number of years ago, which says Ireland could aim to double its production and employment in the sector by 2016, bringing €1bn in revenue, and employing over 10,000 people.
