Chasing the Titanic: film company's demise hits home

The peril of picking winners and losers in economic development is on full display on Florida's east coast.

That's where Digital Domain Media Group, an Academy Award-winning, Port St. Lucie-based special effects firm behind a string of big budget movies, including “Titanic,” shut down its 280-employee animation studio. The Sept. 6 closure announcement and related news, from a CEO resignation to a $35 million loan default to a Sept. 11 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, should resonate on the Gulf Coast.

That's because Sarasota economic development officials and other local leaders pursued Digital Domain, formerly based in California, with vigor in 2009. Potential subsidies ranged from $32 million in performance-based incentives and tax breaks to 20 acres for the facility. The company wanted to open a facility near a university-level digital arts program, and Ringling College of Art and Design helped put Sarasota at the top of the list. State Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, even helped steer an incentive package through the state Legislature to woo the company to town.

But Digital Domain decided to take Port St. Lucie, 110 miles north of Miami, up on a more lucrative offer. The $70 million package, goosed by state and Port St. Lucie city funds, included $40 million toward construction of a facility. Digital Domain, led in 2009 by CEO John Textor, who had a home nearby, had to create 500 jobs by 2014 to cash in on the incentives.

Textor resigned from the firm after the facility closed, and those potential jobs are now gone. Port St. Lucie officials lamented the company's demise in local media accounts, while Florida Gov. Rick Scott says the state will investigate how the decision was made to award the lucrative incentive package.

Left unanswered among the mess: What if all the economic development officials and leaders in Port St. Lucie and Sarasota counties, plus the ones in Tallahassee, spent their time — and money — elsewhere?