As the old dry cleaners building is fixed up, the studio moves on.

Garrett Bennett has produced two films about returning home, in the dilapidated former dry cleaners building on lower Madison Avenue.

Now, with the building’s doors locked and his film equipment in boxes, Bennett is bracing for a true-life tale of sad goodbyes.

“We’d like to find a way to stay on Bainbridge,” said the filmmaker and island native. “Bainbridge has changed so much. Growing up here, there used to be a lot of funky old buildings. This one’s the last one around in that style and still affordable for artists.”

Bennett’s Hat Factory Studios moved out of 310 Madison Ave. in late November, after the property’s new owners told him they planned an extensive renovation of the 3,000 square-foot building. Workers have already taken crowbars to the 56-year-old wood structure, filling dumpsters with the fragments of its interior walls this week.

While the studio is gone, its latest release, “A Relative Thing,” is set to screen at the Palm Beach Film Festival next week.

“This one’s kind of a big deal for us,” Bennett said. “It’s an exclusive festival and is one of the best ways to exhibit a film. It’s one of 15 festivals worldwide that’s attended by distributors.”

The 110-minute drama about siblings reuniting after 16 years apart was well received at the 2004 Seattle International Film Festival and nabbed a nomination for the New American Cinema Award.

The studio’s previous release, “Farewell to Harry,” about a writer returning home and befriending the eccentric owner of a hat factory, has been picked up by Porchlight Entertainment and is set for video release next month.

Bennett, who wrote and directed “Farewell to Harry,” began work on the 2001 film shortly after returning home himself.

With a degree in hand from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, Bennett came back to Bainbridge seeking a “timeless, magical feel” for the planned film.

He stumbled upon the old dry cleaners and set up shop, taking advantage of its central location, cheap rent and expansive rooms.

Transforming old island buildings into hotbeds of creativity is nothing new for Bennett.

He co-founded the Annex Theater on Bainbridge in the late 1980s, putting on plays in old churches and grocery stores. The theater has since moved to Seattle, and is one of the city’s most well-established venues for off-beat performances.

“But all those old places when I returned had been grabbed up so fast and developed into high-end office space or condos,” he said. “Nothing hit the mark for what we needed other than that old building.”

For four years the dry cleaners building served as the studio’s administrative hub and post-production lab. Typically employing fewer than five people on an ongoing basis, the studio’s ranks swelled to more than 30 during productions, with actors using the building for rehearsals.

Until it finds a new home, the Hat Factory has been squeezed into the island apartment Bennett shares with his wife and studio general producer Ann Wilkinson.

“The building was great because it created a center-piece and kept everybody central,” Bennett said. “There was nothing else to do but work on films.”

The studio also relied on a strong pool of local acting talent and Bainbridge’s photogenic landscapes and buildings.

Having the studio on a quiet and scenic island also made Hat Factory productions popular with members of the cast and crew drawn from California, France and other places.

“Everybody loved Bainbridge,” he said. “For them it was like a vacation, but also a chance to work. The island has a lot of advantages going for it.”

While the rent was cheap and the location prime, Bennett said the aging building also brought maintenance challenges.

“Ever since it was built, it’s been settling,” said previous owner Mike Okano.

The structure was erected in 1949 as a one-lane bowling alley. Okano’s father, Phil, moved his Seattle dry cleaning business into the building in the late 1950s.

Bainbridge Cleaners folded in 2000 after a lengthy road construction project that closed lower Madison Avenue.

Okano said scraping the 3,000-square-foot structure for something new made the most sense; he planned to replace the old building with a new mixed use development, possibly with condominiums above retail space.

As he worked to make the project a reality, Okano allowed the Hat Factory to move in.

“They didn’t want to change anything,” he said. “It fit their purpose perfectly.”

But after four years of trying to round up the funds to redevelop the nearly half-acre property, Okano decided to sell.

“I couldn’t get the financing for the project,” he said. “I finally baitled out and decided to let someone else deal with it.”

Okano found a buyer in Two Clams LLC, a local development company that purchased the property about a year ago.

Bennett continued to pay rent until he was asked to move so the new owners could refurbish and and repair the building.

One of the new owners, Eric Edenholm, last week declined to say what his plans are for the building, but said he wants to “avoid offers” on the property.

Parting with the space is bittersweet, Bennett said.

“It’s kind of a bummer,” he said. “It was a great space for us. But at the same time, maybe now we can find something more contemporary, something not quite so old.”

Bennett is now discussing a move to Seattle with the help of one of his producers.

“If he purchases a building in Seattle and lets us move in, it could be a really good deal for us,” he said. “We’d have little overhead there and that’s the only reason we’d go.”

Bennett, who teaches once a week at the Seattle Film Institute, dreams of keeping his studio on the island and expanding it into a film school.

Upcoming projects include shooting a music video for a Ghana-based hip-hop band and script development for a possible horror film; studio information is maintained at www.hatfactorystudios.com.

He’s watching areas zoned for light manufacturing, hoping a large, affordable building will appear before he’s enticed by prospects across the sound.

“Moving to the Day Road area would make a lot of sense,” he said. “If we could find a big enough space, we could have public events, screenplay readings as well as using it as a studio and a place to build sets.

“I’d like to stay on Bainbridge. I hope we can find a way to keep us going here.”