Reknown visual effects firm Industrial Light & Magic, a Disney subsidiary, has relocated its Vancouver studio to the Stack downtown office tower.

An official launch was held recently at the Stack, which is North America’s first net-zero office building.

Janet Lewin, senior vice-president for Lucasfilm VFX (another Disney subsidiary) and general manager of ILM expressed gratitude for provincial incentives that the California-based company has received. ILM is capitalizing on the B.C. government’s expanded five and TV tax-credit program.

“The role of government support in the film and television sector is crucial to our success here,” she told reporters. “It has been instrumental in building a dynamic, competitive and innovative entertainment industry in British Columbia — one that provides thousands of individuals with the opportunity to build careers in this creative field.”

The opening comes as Lucasfilm, founded by legendary Star Wars creator George Lucas, is celebrating its 50th anniversary year.

ILM has won multiple Academy Awards for visual effects.

Since 2013, ILM had leased studio space in Gastown at 21 Water Street. The company originally leased 30,000 square feet in 2013 and expanded to meet growing demand in 2017. Owned by Low Tide Properties, the building is more than a century old.

The new studio spans 40,000 sf on two floors.

“We really saw [the Stack] as an opportunity to reformat what we want from an office space for our talent, for our people,” said Spence Kent, who oversees the firm’s Vancouver and San Francisco studios, told Post Media.

“What we saw here was an opportunity to start from a blank slate. The Stack is a new building, it was slab to slab. That’s what we walked into. We’d inherited and retrofitted previous spaces. But this was our chance to start something from the ground up and really build something that works well with a hybrid workflow. We were really excited to find a building, too, that is carbon neutral.”

The Vancouver studio has helped produce such movies as Aquaman, Good Night Oppy and the Terminator: Dark Fate, and such television series as The Mandalorian, The Sandman, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

ILM staff can access hybrid-workspace seats at the Stack, which is located downtown at 1133 Melville Street near the Burrard SkyTrain station.

The 550,000-sf Stack was completed in 2023, the 37-storey building is jointly owned by Oxford Properties, a Toronto-based subsidiary of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, and the Toronto-based Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Pictured: Interior of ILM’s new downtown Vancouver location.

Photo: Industrial Light & Magic

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