Leaders of Baton Rouge’s beleaguered entertainment industry are hoping for a resumption of activity, now that Hollywood’s major studios and key industry unions have finalized an agreement that will clear the way for TV and film production in the U.S. to resume.

The unions and studios have been negotiating over safety protocols mandated by the pandemic since late spring. Now that they’ve agreed on safe working conditions, the industry can get back to work.

But there wasn’t much work in Baton Rouge to begin with. Though local activity had picked up somewhat in 2019, after changes to the state’s entertainment industries tax credit program in 2015 decimated what had been a thriving sector of the local economy, most of the recent productions consisted of TV series and small-budget, independent films.

“We have people looking at us but no contracts signed,” says Katie Pryor, executive director of the Baton Rouge Film Commission. “You’re seeing some stuff coming back to New Orleans but not much. Historically, film comes back from tragedies so I’m optimistic but everyone is in the same boat.”

The situation is particularly challenging for the market’s flagship studio, Celtic Media Centre, which has more than 87,000 square feet of vacant sound studio space.

What’s more, one of the few tenants at the studio—Circle Graphics, which was leasing 30,000-square feet in Stage 4 to print its large-format graphics—has been shut down since COVID-19, though the company is continuing to pay its rent.

The only bright spot for the studio at the moment is Focus Foods, a new company that has emerged during the pandemic to produce prepared meals for schools, health care facilities and disaster relief efforts.

The company is manufacturing frozen meals at the studio in a space that had been outfitted with a commercial kitchen in 2018, when Waitr was going to start a restaurant incubator for upstart chefs. But that program fell apart when Waitr was acquired by new owners and went public.

“We’re glad we had the space and it was a nice fit for the Focus Foods guys,” says Celtic’s director of studio operations, Aaron Bayham.

As for the rest of the unused space, Bayham says he’s hoping activity picks up as he continues to market the property to alternative users.

“We can essentially turn off the utilities so there is not a lot of overhead from an operations standpoint,” he says. “But you have your hard costs and it hurts, so we’re just doing the best we can.”