Taos County approves plan to convert shuttered school into area’s first film studio

RANCHOS DE TAOS — Jenny Natelson has always loved films for the dynamic stories they’re able to tell, but these days she can’t stop thinking about all the work that goes into how — and where — they’re made.

On Aug. 28, the Taos County Planning Commission granted a special use permit to Natelson’s production company, 7K Studios, to repurpose a shuttered school behind the historic San Francisco de Asís Church. Natelson plans to convert it into the area’s first full-service film studio.

“That building already had a sense of community,” said Billy Romero, a commissioner who carried the unanimous vote to approve the permit for the St. Francis Catholic Parochial School. “To keep that going with this type of business, to me, meant the world.”

While some neighbors spoke out about privacy concerns at the permit hearing, Romero said Natelson satisfied most residents that the project won’t bring more traffic to the area than students, teachers and their parents once did.

The Ranchos de Taos School shut its doors about 20 years ago and sits on 3 acres in a residential neighborhood along Espinoza Road. Taken together, its buildings offer around 50,000 square feet of space.

In an old adobe gymnasium hung with vigas, Natelson envisions a soundstage for film crews as well as an event space to rent for community dances and quinceañeras. On the doors of classrooms in another building, she’s already marked off rooms for post-production suites. In the school’s former five-bedroom nunnery, she sees a bed and breakfast to allow filmmakers to live on site as they bring their projects to life.

She says the space is rough at this stage but charming — very “Taos.”

“A friend of mine took me to see this property for sale in August of last year,” she told the Journal. “I was just like, the only thing this could be is a production studio. After that, I was just laser-focused on acquiring it and going from there. We got it in December and just got approved for this special use permit.”

She and her business partner, Sayer Danforth, plan to start work right away on a project that they hope will give Taos County a surer foothold in the behind-the-scenes work that’s fueled Natelson’s 12-year career and brought major economic value to communities across New Mexico.

“Any additional resources for this industry is a plus for the whole state,” said Jennifer LaBar-Tapia, film commissioner of the Santa Fe Film Office. “To see Taos, one of our northern communities, be interested in the industry and support the industry — it’s a win for all of us, really.”

Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Las Cruces are home to three dedicated regional film offices, while the New Mexico Film Office works in tandem with dozens of film liaisons in tourism departments and chambers of commerce to coordinate shoots across the state.

Together, this network of film facilitators helps recommend filming locations, stores to buy props and local film professionals, who take care of the myriad tasks that take a project from pre-production to the silver screen.

Though it’s had a film liaison in the past, Taos County currently has no local film office, but Natelson and LaBar-Tapia both believe adding another node to their network would help Taos attract the kinds of productions that have brought big business to the state.

“One of the things about the Santa Fe Film Office is that we share a kind of corridor with Albuquerque,” LaBar-Tapia said. “We share crew and a lot of resources. I look at this as like a Santa Fe-Taos corridor now, so we can coordinate things between Santa Fe and Taos, so it just ties everything all together.”

New Mexico has generated $3.8 billion in direct spending from film production revenue since 2016, LaBar-Tapia told the Town of Taos Council during a presentation in March. Santa Fe alone has brought in roughly $1.3 billion in revenue over the same period.

Much of that is due to New Mexico’s Film Production Tax Credit, which was created in the early 2000s and currently offers filmmakers a 25% base credit on productions. That discount can increase to as much as 40% on productions that film more than 60 miles outside Santa Fe and Albuquerque, which includes Taos County.

While New Mexico in 2025 is facing stiffer competition when it comes to attracting film to the state — particularly from countries like Canada, which boasts a national film incentive — LaBar-Tapia said the moviemaking industry remains lucrative, touching many aspects of New Mexico’s economy.

“When they do set construction, hardware stores supply what they need for building a set,” she said. “They need paint and painters, construction workers and thrift stores to supply items, especially for period pieces, like ‘Dark Winds,’ which is set on Navajo Nation in the early ‘70s — you know, avocado-green appliances.”

Natelson’s interest in the industry developed after she took a film class at Colorado College, where she was pursuing a degree in political science. After graduating, she worked in reality TV, documentary film, scripted and feature productions. She knew it was what she wanted to do.

Currently, she works in commercial productions in New York, but she sees a path back home through her dream of a local film studio in Taos.

And Natelson hopes to share that dream with her community, giving it an asset it hasn’t had before. She and Danforth are looking to partner with other local entities, like University of New Mexico-Taos, Taos Pueblo and TrueKids1.

“There are so many amazing opportunities that we could bring in once we’re up and running,” Natelson said. “It’s not just for film and production. It’s also about what projects we can bring to Taos and do ourselves. What grassroots stuff can we try to get going?”