(The Center Square) – On Tuesday, the Shreveport City Council committed to a long-term public-private partnership with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s vision to develop the downtown area into a major entertainment destination and screen production hub.
The council voted unanimously to amend its 30-year lease for G-Unit Studios to 99 years. The deal includes control of the Empowering People in Careers Center, a building located behind the studio, where Jackson’s company, G-Unit Film & Television, will assume responsibility for career training for residents of the Grande Bayou Apartments.
Jackson’s involvement with G-Unit Studios – previously called Millennium Studios – started in 2023 when his company signed a 30-year contract with the city. In January, a cooperative endeavor agreement with Louisiana Economic Development revealed a larger planned investment than previously announced.
The deal would reimburse G-Unit up to $50 million to redevelop Millennium Studios and Stageworks, and build a third entertainment-style G-Dome. Jackson committed $74 million to the projects.
But the council learned in April that concern over chronic flooding at the studio location had slowed construction progress.
At the council’s administrative conference on Monday, Temple Williams, an entertainment executive and spokesman for G-Unit, made a candid appeal to work in partnership revitalizing downtown.
“We are putting a significant investment into the entertainment district, the studio, stageworks and the dome,” Williams said. “What’s very important to Mr. Jackson is to create that world of production here, but in order to do that, we have to create an environment where world class artists, artisans and technicians want to be here.
“But we don’t want to be the only ones,” Williams said. “We want the city to stand beside us in that investment.”
Councilman Jim Taliaferro said Shreveport had lost “faith” in itself, adding that it sometimes takes an outside voice to help the city recognize its own value.
The city was prepared to donate the vacant and dormant studio site to a library and receive “no funding at all,” Councilman Alan Jackson said. The city bought it for $3.8 million in 2022.
According to Williams, the flooding issue raised last month is no longer an impediment. While city engineers believed their $250,000 drainage improvements had resolved past flooding problems, Williams previously said G-Unit was not yet ready to commit to construction.
“I can say that we are prepared to move forward with our endeavors,” Williams said Monday. “Those things are subject to our negotiations with the state. We have an obligation to present all of that to the state, so once that is done, then I believe we will be in a position to move forward.”
Williams discussed the vast entertainment ecosystem G-Unit has built and is developing, with over a billion dollars in the past 10 years in production funds.
“We will be producing our own content, which gives us consistency and volume, and it creates true enterprise,” he said. “We want to be producing here … This is why Mr. Jackson has invested so deeply in that area.”
