The former site of the Union Stockyards may soon become a hub for an industry far removed from its meatpacking past.
Third Coast Music, a barely three-year-old nonprofit, won the city’s call for proposals to develop the landmarked former Stockyards Bank Building and an adjacent empty lot at 41st and Halsted streets. The winning proposal, designed by architecture firm HED and announced in November, will transform the site into an $80 million music production center and event space.
The proposed development would result in a complex like none other in the Midwest, anchored by a 32,000-square-foot facility housing a massive scoring stage and control room. The stage’s size and capacity alone — approximately 6,000 square feet and able to hold around 100 musicians — will make it one of the largest in the country. Even the storied stage at Skywalker Sound, north of San Francisco, is less than 5,000 square feet.
The proposed music complex would include a sound stage, control room and event and performance spaces in the former Stockyards Bank Building and adjacent lot.
The proposal also includes event and performance spaces, classrooms, a café, a gift shop and a small Chicago music museum, building on long-simmering — and long-stalled — plans to establish a blues or house museum in the city.
Until now, Third Coast Music, the group leading the project, mostly flew under the radar. It was incorporated as a nonprofit with the singular goal of getting Chicago its very own scoring stage. If all goes according to plan, the project will break ground in spring 2026, after securing funding by the end of next year.
“Not only are we going to build something from the ground up, but we can take the best of all the scoring stages in California and hopefully make one of the best scoring stages that people, not only locally but internationally, will want to visit,” said Susan Chatman, president and cofounder of Third Coast Music.
The need for a scoring stage in Chicago is personal for Chatman, a professional violinist and South Side native. Universal Recording Corporation, which once had a large recording room, closed in 1989; Chicago Recording Company also has large recording studios, but none big enough to accommodate a full symphony orchestra. Without the necessary infrastructure, Chicago musicians can’t tap into valuable film, TV and advertising income streams — streams that the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) has said it is trying to boost amid precarious budget gaps. Chatman herself eventually decamped to Los Angeles to work in the city’s many studio orchestras, where she’s been ever since. She’s certainly not the only one.
Katherine Hughes. Susan Chatman and Rich Daniels, the founders of Third Coast Music, want to fill the need for a scoring stage in Chicago.
Courtesy of Third Coast Music
“Chicago needs a spot like this. We have layers of freelancers that would all thrive in this sort of work environment,” Dan Nichols, a recording engineer and founder of Aphorism Studios, told WBEZ.
If there ever was a time for Chicago to have a scoring stage, this is it. According to the Chicago Film Office, a division of DCASE that coordinates with production companies, Chicago is currently the fourth largest production market for television series in the U.S. Film and TV production in Chicago generated a peak $691 million in economic activity in 2022, the last year on record. And production revenue has been on the rise since 2008, when the General Assembly passed the Illinois Film Production Tax Credit. Through at least 2033, film, TV, streaming and advertising companies receive a 30% transferable tax credit on all qualified expenditures, including production spending and salaries. As an extra incentive to showrunners, Illinois is the only state not to impose a cap on those credits.
Despite the industry’s rapid growth, facility limitations here often require production companies to complete their projects in Los Angeles or New York. Third Coast Music’s scoring stage brings Chicago closer to hosting large film or television projects end to end — all within city limits.
“While Chicago continues to assemble the building blocks needed to support long-form, full-service post-production, the absence of a scoring stage remains an impediment to Chicago becoming an essential national hub for post[-production] as it has become for production,” the Chicago Film Office said in an emailed statement. “Making Chicago a place where film, TV, music, and media creatives have the infrastructure to create projects from start to finish will transform the City’s industry, thereby elevating the art form and amplifying its cultural and economic impact.”
The film and television industry isn’t the only sector that stands to benefit from Third Coast’s proposal. Large ensembles like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or Grant Park Festival Chorus could conceivably work there in the future, rather than record in venues primarily designed for live performance.
Third Coast Music’s scoring stage brings Chicago closer to hosting large film or television projects end to end — all within city limits. Pictured is the proposed building that would sit at 41st and Halsted streets.
Courtesy of Third Coast Music
Charlie Post, the audio engineer of the Chicago Symphony and downtown venue Guarneri Hall, said he met with Chatman and one of her Third Coast co-founders, Chicago violinist Katherine Hughes, as early as 2020 to discuss the proposal. Even then, he thought the concept was “fantastic.” He echoes the idea that a space like it is much needed in the city.
“Only a handful of venues in Chicago have an acoustic that supports large orchestras. You need sufficient space for the overtones of the instruments to interact,” Post said.
The challenge will be keeping it open. Both Post and Nichols have watched countless studio spaces shutter over the years. The development’s steep $80 million price tag is just the beginning.
The Third Coast team was optimistic on that point. The organization’s nonprofit status opens up the project to tax credits, grant revenue and tax increment financing (TIF) funds. They also hope that the same philanthropy sector that supports live music elsewhere in the city will crack their wallets.
Like countless other city institutions that have added donors to their monikers — most recently, the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science of Industry — naming rights are on the table too.
“We’ve seen that copious amounts of times in this town,” says Rich Daniels, vice president of Third Coast and the former musical director of the Fox drama Empire. “So, great — for $25 million, your name here.”
Hannah Edgar is a Chicago-based culture writer. Their work appears regularly in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Musical America and Downbeat.
