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Local city puts temporary stop to film productions

NEWNAN, Ga. — One local city council has decided to pull the plug on film productions temporarily.

Small business owners in the Newnan area told Channel 2's Wendy Corona that it's time to get a handle on how productions are planned.

Jeff Morgan has run Morgan’s Jewelers in downtown Newnan for 45 years.

“I don’t mind a movie coming here, but be fair,” Morgan said.

In the past month the town square has hosted two major movie productions.

“I did almost no business,” Morgan told Corona. “I mean it was at least 90 percent under an average day.”

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Small businesses say they are feeling the pinch of productions that blocked off streets and many of
the square's few parking spaces.

“Parking is a huge issue for us. We don’t want our customers to start to think, oh there’s filming downtown so we just not going to go,” said Jason Kanner from Ace Beer Growlers.

Small business owners say the city has heard them. The City Council voted on a filming moratorium through May.

The city sent Corona a statement saying:

"The City of Newnan is committed to the prompt review and development of a permitting process that successfully balances the interest of the film industry as well as our community’s residents and business owners."

Small business owners say they hope a new fair approach can be reached since recent productions paid some local businesses for their lost earnings and not others.

“The people they were compensated very fairly. Some people weren’t compensated, and it doesn’t make any sense why,” Kanner said.

In all, film and TV productions brought about $9.5 billion into Georgia last year.