The investors in Michigan Motion Picture Studios L.L.C. could obtain up to $28 million in bond financing for a movie production and training center in Pontiac on Wednesday — exactly a year after the project was first announced.

Why the long turnaround time?

Size of the project, a possible learning curve for some of its partners and the need for outside financing or tax credits all could have played a role, observers say.

“There have been a number of procedures to go through. It's been a long road over the past year while we worked this out,” said Steven Lemberg, CFO of Michigan Motion Pictures and real estate company Nelson Ventures, Birmingham. “The credit markets have not exactly come back to welcome us with open arms.”

Lemberg said the partners will put up all the money for the $60 million Raleigh Studios Michigan project, on a 22 acre parcel of the General Motors Co. Centerpoint Business Campus in Pontiac, and will recoup some of it through various reimbursements and tax credits.

Construction could begin later this month if the Oakland County Economic Development Corp. approves a bond sale as expected on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Ferndale-based S3 Entertainment Group Inc. also announced about a year ago it was scouting a location for a film studio and opened S3 Studios in Madison Heights last month.

Production work starts at the studio today, and six production companies have already booked time at the location.

S3 managing partner Jeff Spilman said S3 was likely able to move faster than others on leasing and opening a studio because the company has sought no financing or approval for incentives or credits.

Spilman said he and S3 partners Larry August of Avalon Films Inc. in Royal Oak and Hollywood producer Jeff Stern have funded the company's growth in large part “out of operations,” since relocating to Michigan from Los Angeles in 2008.

“It's still about money,” he said. “I'm not personally familiar with all the details of the projects in Pontiac or (Unity Studios in) Allen Park, but my understanding is that for projects of that size an issue tends to be lining up financing.”

Spilman said S3, which also handles film equipment rental at its Ferndale headquarters and some financial assistance to production companies through its Michigan Film Finance subsidiary, also has stayed small.

Many of the projects that pass through its doors are modestly funded studio or independent projects, often with $5 million to $10 million budgets, that can take full advantage of Michigan film incentives since none of their directors or actors would exceed the $2 million cap on the incentives.

S3 studios includes one 25,000-square-foot stage, 10,000 square feet of furnished office space, post-production facilities, a screening room and other film production support at the Madison Heights location.

By comparison, Raleigh Studios Michigan proposes at least seven sound stages in a 185,000-square-foot building it will erect along with renovating an existing 368,400-square-foot building in Pontiac.

With 45-foot-high interior ceilings and up to 90,000 square feet within a single sound stage under the Pontiac plan, the Raleigh site could conceivably handle much bigger film projects.

“In the short term, we probably won't see as many of the “Red Dawn” kind of productions coming with $50 million or more budgets looking for a large-sized studio and make lots of explosions,” Spilman said.

“We wanted to make the size of our studio suited to the size and budgets of productions that can make the most of Michigan's incentive programs.”

Mark Adler, director of the Novi-based Michigan Production Alliance, a Novi-based trade group that lobbies on behalf of the state's film industry, said the caps on compensation under Michigan's incentives law could draw smaller productions at first, but in time it could attract more and larger projects like the “Red Dawn” remake due out in November.

He also predicts Raleigh, S3 and other local companies that lease space to production companies will eventually have to develop a mix of customers, including commercial production, to succeed.

“That's just what it's going to mean to be a studio in Michigan. Raleigh is not going to be entirely Hollywood-focused on large movies for wide release,” he said.

“There's going to be a need to do television, corporate production work, commercials and smaller projects as part of a successful business model. That's why it's important to be able at some point to expand the credits to commercial and other work.”

Partners in Michigan Motion Picture Studios include Hollywood-based Raleigh Studios; A. Alfred Taubman and the Taubman family; Walbridge Aldinger CEO John Rakolta; a trust for Nelson Ventures' CEO Linden Nelson; and William Morris Endeavor Entertainment L.L.C., the company created last year by the merger of William Morris Agency and Endeavor Entertainment.

Ari Emmanuel, co-CEO of William Morris Endeavor and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, is also one of the project backers.

The partners expect to sell between $23 million to $28 million to help fund the project, with $18 million of the bonds to be insured by the State of Michigan Employees Retirement System and the other $5 million to $10 million in unsecured bonds to be purchased directly by the project backers or their immediate families.

Of the remaining $32 million, Michigan Motion Pictures expects to be reimbursed $3.8 million for infrastructure improvements at the site through an allocation to the city of Pontiac under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Another $11.1 million will come in Michigan film infrastructure tax credits and $15.1 million from the federal New Market Tax Credits Program for investors in a commercial or mixed-development project in low-income areas.