[BC] Westwood One at Courthouse

[Edwin Bukont]

Yes Chip, Westwood One sure did have a facility at Courthouse.  I don't know the exact chronology.  It was first built by USRN in about 1984 or so.  That build was a fairly minimal installation. 
 
Sometime in late 1980s or early 1990s, in that wonderful (pre Sarbanes Oxley) period when Mel did whatever the hell he wanted with any company on whose board he sat, control of USRN was acquired by either CBS or Westwood but much of the paperwork still was USRN. 
 
The physical facility 'ownership' was transferred to Westwood.  The facility got a serious overhaul, and that may have been in the works prior to Mel's involvement, with a good sized tech room, two studios, one unfinished/walled-in studio, all the usual expectations for power, cooling, access floors etc in about 8k SF.  The tech room had a self contained 5  ton glycol cooler with heat exchanger in the garage area.  The other rooms used building chilled water for a 7.5 and 15/20 two stage heat pump.  At that time, a 60kW generator was added.  I have never seen a small facility built to network standards quite like this was, the electrical distribution infrastructure was massive.  At least one sat uplink was on the roof, maybe two but had been removed before I ever saw the place.  There was a 6" conduit coming down from the roof to the suite.
 
I believe it was by gentlemen's agreement that WJFK had RPU gear on the roof and some telco loops back, I don't recall the specifics.
 
Sometime around 1995 or 1996, just before I became involved with Bonneville, Fee Lee mentioned at an SBE meeting that Westwood was looking to unload the facility.  I talked with George Thomas  (IIRC), based at Westwood Crystal City (old Mutual place) who provided plans and access through Fee.  I visited the site and  do recall seeing a store room full of equipment with CBS tags but everything else was Westwood.  Again that lovely pre-Sox asset mgt that is a hallmark of Mel's control.
 
In September of 1996, when I got hired by Alan Hotlen as CE for 104.1, my first marching orders, with nearly $1M at my disposal, was to quote, 'get us out of this fire trap before this time next year, and dont keep a stick of wood from this place."  Alan hated the Auth Road facility and hated Joe Vallario even more.  There were screaming matches between those two over rights and responsibilities. 
 
I called Fee about the space, it was still available but on a walkthrough I found it had since been stripped of everything broadcast.  The electrical, environmental, floor and some other backbone items were still in place.  By early February 1997, we had a deal in place to take the space at about half what it would cost either CBS (which has recently acquired control of Westwood's real estate liabilities) or the landlord to restore the space.  And at half the cost of square footage  (20 vs 40). 
 
The irony was, about a week after we signed the letter of intent, I remember the rumor was starting that WJFK was looking to move from their cramped faciliites and had figured if they could not find something else, then Courthouse was their fall back plan.
 
 I recall that when Dan Ryson mentioned that option, I looked at him and said, 'um, Dan, I just rented that space".   I still chuckle at that one time the Mel magic failed.
 
We began demo in May 1997, construction began in July/August, we began pulling cable on Oct. 1 and it was on the air in parallel with Marlow Frights (kudos to Dave Garner) by Nov 1 and went live on Nov. 7, with no thanks to RCS Master Control.  We kept both of the original studios, moved the tech center and redid that area as a main studio, added another studio, added some cooling systems and another 3k SF of space that was available on that floor (sales allll the way at the other end of the floor).  All consoles were Pacific and the tech center was modeled on what John Diamantis had done for WPKX (WCXR).
 
The intent was to move WGMS in with 104.1 and space was even delinated for a music library, but that all crashed when the new market manager came on board, along with two changes of GM during the construction period.  Yeah, I had fun. 
 
On funny incident, after we had moved in, Fee came by one day and entered his code to the front door,,,,and it still worked...I had GM in face over the little security breach.  I forget who had been retained for security, but I know we changed companies and codes.  I had never had the old codes and had been told they were all wiped when Westwood left the building.
 
Thanks to the facility left behind by Westwood, we got a $2M dollar facility for $800k.
 
Edwin Bukont CSRE, DRB, CBNT 
V- 240.417.2475; F- 240.368.1265