Just like the farmer in "Field of Dreams," who replaced his Iowa corn field with a baseball diamond, Socrates Buenger has a tight grip on faith.

Buenger, the owner of the recently formed Maui Film Studios, is creating a 21,000-square-foot film and television soundstage in a new concrete building in Kahului. When he’s finished — sometime this summer, he hopes — Buenger is convinced Hollywood will come. He’s even hinted that productions are already poised to start but he won’t say any more than that. This is a competitive business, he said.

"We’re way beyond ‘if you build it they will come,’" he said. "I have a production we are trying to get in by late summer. I can’t say what it is. It’s a feature film and it’s a big-budget feature film."

Give him credit, though. The 47-year-old Buenger is doing this without government backing or tax incentives tied to construction or production. Instead, he lined up private investors on Maui — he won’t say who — and put the deal together.

The building is a serious calling card. Soundstages in Hawaii, as well as empty buildings with enough open space to be converted, are scarce. Until now, the largest facility is the state film studio near Diamond Head, which has a 16,500-square-foot soundstage. It’s been booked solid for nearly 10 years, mostly to produce three TV shows for ABC.

It also needs about $10.8 million in renovations.

Maui Film Studios’ soundstage is part of a 104,000-square-foot warehouse that wholesaler Paradise Beverage opened in November 2011 at the Maui Lani Village Center. They even share a wall of hurricane-proof concrete. When the Maui complex is completed, it will include a 2,700-square-foot mill for set building, 5,000 square feet of office space and a 35,000-square-foot parking lot. And the warehouse-turned-soundstage will have special soundproofing blankets that are used to eliminate echoes, Buenger said.

Buenger also has a working relationship with TM Motion Picture Equipment Rentals, which supplied lighting and rigging equipment to the failed ABC series "Last Resort" and did not want to ship the equipment back to the mainland, he said. Incoming productions will be able to lease the equipment.

Buenger won’t say what all that costs but he said converting an existing space — one of Maui’s many "rattly, dusty tin warehouses" — would cost millions.

BUENGER is originally from Southern California, where he worked as a director of photography in film and television. He moved to Maui 10 years ago to run an unsuccessful state Senate campaign for a friend, Don Couch, now a County Council member. Four years ago he got the itch to produce a TV pilot and was stunned to learn there was no studio space anywhere. So he decided to build his own.

Maui County officials are understandably ecstatic.

Harry Donenfeld, head of the county film office, said Maui will now be able to compete with Oahu for film and television projects.

"It’s a game changer," he said. "Pristine, unshot or very little used locations. Brand-new facilities. This is not funky, steel doors with rats and termite ants. This is a beautiful, brand-new concrete building."

During his 18 months in the film office, Donenfeld said he’s heard from producers of a half dozen feature film projects who wound up rejecting Maui because it didn’t have a soundstage.

But just having a building may not be enough to ensure success, said Donne Dawson, state film commissioner. Most of the state’s experienced film and TV production labor force does not live on Maui but on Oahu, where the lion’s share of productions are shot.

"It’s not that we don’t have labor, it’s just that they would have to bring it from Oahu or from L.A. to augment what they don’t have," she said. "It is not a matter of not being able to get them. It’s how much is it going to cost."

Buenger knows that. He’s working with the University of Hawaii Maui College on a curriculum that will create a Maui-based pool of workers, such as grips, gaffers, set builders, dressers and camera operators. He hopes to start the training this fall.

AND that’s a wrap …