Entertainment industry leaders joined by Texas State Representative Dawnna Dukes, Texas State Senator Robert Deuell, M.D. and Director of the Texas Film Commission Bob Hudgins, announced VILLA MUSE (www.villamuse.com), a $1.5 billion mixed-use development that will be situated 15 miles east of Austin. The ambitious project will include residential, retail and commercial spaces anchored by the $125-million, 200-acre Villa Muse Studios, developed for the film, television, advertising, music and videogame industries.

Phase one, to open by the end of 2008, will include a variety of soundstages, including a 50,000-square-foot purpose-built soundstage, a scoring stage, recording studios and an outdoor amphitheater with a capacity of more than 70,000.

The news coincides with the recent vote by the Texas House of Representatives on House Bill 1634, authored by Dukes and sponsored by Deuell, which provides state-funded incentives for film and television production. (The VILLA MUSE project will not receive funds appropriated by HB 1634.)

VILLA MUSE is led by founder/CEO Jay Aaron Podolnick, a producer/engineer who founded Texas' first 24-track recording facility in 1972. Podolnick has worked with such artists as Marianne Faithfull, Eric Johnson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Christopher Cross, Dan Hartman, Stephen Doster and The Electomagnets.

The VILLA MUSE team includes Rupert Neve, CTO; Tom Copeland, senior VP of film studio operations; Bob Walters, senior VP of recording studio operations and opened Power Station Studios in New York; Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, VP of strategic development; and Hiten Patel, financial. Also on board are Steve Durr of acoustical designers Steve Durr Designs, nonzero \ architecture (formerly studio bau:ton), Sam Toyoshima of Acoustics Design Office and Land Design Studio, a planning and design team based in Austin.