St. George mayor says Kevin Costner will build movie studio in St. George

John Rogers 

Famed actor Kevin Costner has spent a lot of time in Southern Utah in recent years. He recently finished filming a two-part western titled “Horizon: An American Saga,” which is coming to theaters this summer, starring, along with Costner, Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington. Many of the films’ locations are in and around Washington County.

Now the actor has plans to leave a lasting legacy on the area, according to an announcement made by St. George Mayor Michele Randall during her recent State of the City address.

Costner, the star of blockbuster movies and television shows such as “Dances with Wolves,” “Yellowstone” and “The Bodyguard,” will open Territory Studios on land by the St. George Airport.

Territory Studios will have 70,000 square feet of sound stages, along with 51,000 square feet of production warehouses and 31,750 square feet of production offices. The studio will also include a Costner-themed restaurant and will offer tours for visitors.

The movie studio will be built along the Southern Parkway that wraps around St. George’s southern border. The studio site is off Exit 7, which leads to the St. George Regional Airport.

The project was detailed in a video shown during the mayor’s address by local Realtor Macrae Heppler, who is known for producing a series on YouTube highlighting incoming developments in Washington County.

“Recently a lot of people have known Kevin Costner filmed a movie here — ’Horizon’ — and he really liked the area,” Heppler said in the video. “So he’s actually partnered with land owners out here and will be doing a film studio that’s going to be a massive addition to the performing arts industry of St. George.”

Heppler’s overall video, which Randall asked him to produce for the State of the City address, also focused on other projects along the Southern Parkway, including a new Smith’s supermarket, a Moto Zoo motorsports store and an another undisclosed large national retailer, that Heppler said people “will be excited about” that is also in negotiations to be built in the same area.

Randall also spotlighted a number of other major construction and development projects either underway or planned for the St. George metro area, including Tech Ridge, a development for technology companies currently being built at the site of the old municipal airport on the hill west of downtown St. George.

“I hope people take away that we are growing, but we’re not just growing homes; we’re growing businesses, which is really important,” Randall said. “With the studio that Kevin Costner’s partnering with, that’s just another arm to our economic revenue. Instead of construction that we’ve always been so tied to, now we have Tech Ridge, now we’ll have a movie studio.”

A timetable and further details of Costner’s project will be released at a later time, the mayor’s office said.