Regional Public Radio Station Celebrates New Pasadena Facility

A project that was once at risk of ending up in the trash bin forever is now slowly becoming a reality as works for the second phase of Southern California Public Radio’s $27-million Broadcast Center and Community Forum officially started on Tuesday.

If not for the quick thinking of the acting station manager of 89.3 KPCC-FM some 10 years ago, the multi-million broadcast center and community forum could have just been a part of California’s storied past, said KPCC President & CEO Bill Davis.

“About 10 years ago, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had said that it was cutting KPCC off from funding. Bill Kling (president and CEO) of American Public Media sent a letter to then Pasadena City College President James Kossler but the letter ended up into the waste basket,” said Davis during the official groundwork of SCPR’s high-tech Broadcast Center and Community Forum at 474 South Raymond Avenue.

The radio station’s future could have gone to the garbage forever until Cindy Young, acting station manager at the time, saw the return address on the envelope of the letter in the trash bin and pulled it out, Davis recalled.

Opening the trashed letter, Young discovered to her surprise that Kling had expressed his interest to purchase KPCC. Young immediately informed Kossler of Kling’s interest but the then PCC President turned down the offer of the American Public Media president.

“And so Bill (Kling) said ‘there’s got to be something we can do’ and so the idea of Southern California Public Radio as the centering institution for America’s most diverse metropolis was born,” said Davis.

SPCR’s broadcast center and community forum, described as a “Town Hall for the 21st Century”, will be nestled on a converted former building on South Raymond Avenue and work is scheduled to be finished in
January next year.

The entire broadcasting and administrative staff and all the studios, including the flagship 89.3 KPCC station, which is currently based in Pasadena City College, will move into the new building, said Davis during Tuesday’s event attended by more than 150, primarily KPCC Board members, donors, staff, Pasadena City officials,  construction company representatives and community leaders.

“This almost did not happen. All of these came very close to the shredder,” said Davis, adding that more than $20 million has already been raised for the project despite the present economic challenges.

“The construction side has been amazing.  The transformation of the building, the new studio setting, seeing how it’s going to look and expand the opportunity for more programming is both humbling and heartening,” he earlier told Pasadena Star-News.

Mayor Bill Bogaard, who is a self-confessed regular listener of KPCC, said last Tuesday’s “ground breaking” was an important day for SCPR and the City of Pasadena as well.

“SCPR is an institution that every city in Southern California would die for and now it’s in the city of Pasadena,” said Boogard, who was the first interviewee of KPCC program Air Talk, when the program started 25 years ago.

SCPR’s flagship station, KPCC, has garnered over 200 journalistic honors including 3 Distinguished Radio Journalist awards (from the Greater LA Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and the 2008 top honor for Breaking News from the LA Press Club.

“Why am I so proud of KPCC? Because it represents journalistic excellence, total independence, and it is a reliable source of information about local, regional, national, and international events. It is an invaluable resource to all of Southern California,” the mayor said.

KPCC Chairman of the Board Gordon Crawford also expressed his gratitude for the warm welcome being extended by the residents of Pasadena to SCPR, as evident in the number of people attending last Tuesday’s affair and of Mayor Bogaard’s unwavering support to the building project.

“We had a great faith that KPCC could be transformed into a significant and enduring community asset,” said Crawford.

KPCC is just one of the three radio stations under the SCPR public radio network. SCPR also operates 89.1 KUOR-FM in the Inland Empire and 90.3 KPCV in the Coachella Valley.

SCPR’s flagship station, KPCC, has garnered over 200 journalistic honors including three Distinguished Radio Journalist awards (from the Greater LA Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and the 2008 top honor for Breaking News from the LA Press Club.

Reaching more than a 600,000 listeners every week, SCPR is reportedly the most listened to public radio news service of any kind in Southern California and serves the diverse communities of Southern California with award winning local news coverage as well as the most NPR (National Public Radio) content available anywhere in the region.

The Community Forum will be built for purpose of providing better public interaction and allowing a perfect venue to bring diverse audiences together, encouraging face-to-face dialogue on important issues of the day and provide space for community group’s meetings and gatherings, station officials have said.

“A lot of the staff are quite excited. The number and size of the studios is so much larger than what we had at PCC,” Davis told Pasadena Star-News.

The Forum at SCPR’s Broadcast Center will also host audiences for live programs, like AirTalk with Larry Mantle and Patt Morrison, and create a much-needed space for civic engagement in Southern California.

“The Forum will be a physical manifestation of SCPR’s public service mission — a modern-day Town Hall for all of Southern California. It will be a common place for people to come together, to understand each other and to grow together, and will help meet the wide range of information needs of the diverse communities of the region,” said Davis.