Its main lobby boasts an open meeting and performance space, where country act Little Big Town served as the inaugural live act. Music videos appear on oversized television screens. The Radio.com logo is prominently placed for all to see, while a corridor outside studios is littered with various awards won by some of the company’s radio stations.
Welcome to the fourth floor of 2400 Market Street, Philadelphia — the new home of Entercom Communications‘ corporate headquarters.
The sparkling facility within city limits, on the east bank of the Schuykill River opposite 30th Street Station, is now open. And, the Philadelphia Business Journal on Friday (12/27) offered readers with a huge peek inside the facility — along with a one-on-one interview with President/CEO David Field.
The new Entercom HQ includes the Xfinity Lounge, sponsored space for use as a green room for guests of any of the six stations that comprise the company’s Philadelphia radio stations.
Entercom/Philadelphia’s on-air properties are the former CBS Radio stations KYW-AM 1060, WIP-FM 94.1, WPHT-AM 1210, WTDY-FM 96.5, and WOGL-FM 98.1, along with WBEB-FM 101.1, acquired from Jerry Lee.
More than 300 people work in the facility, which takes up 67,000 square feet. It is notable for many reasons, but for the city of Philadelphia, the arrival of Entercom from outside of city limits ends a long tradition of companies snubbing the municipality for its tax rates. On the west bank of the Schuykill is 555 E. City Avenue in Bala Cynwynd — in the early 1980s home to Cox Radio’s WZGO “Z106” and today home to Beasley Media Group‘s Philadelphia stations.
The Beasley building is just up the street from Entercom’s former home of 401 E. City Avenue, where it used some 14,000 square feet. But, this was a legacy office. In fact, WTDY (the one-time WZGO and, after that, WEGX “Eagle 106”) and WOGL were using studios at 555 E. City Avenue. WIP and WPHT (the former WCAU-AM) were spread across two floors of an Old City office building. KYW was in shared space with KYW-3, the CBS O&O in Philadelphia.
Now, nearly all of Entercom’s operations for Philadelphia are within the City of Brotherly Love. “Certain administrative functions” will continue from the 555 E. City Avenue locale, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports.
Explaining the move to 2400 Market, Field told the business publication, “I think to be a world class media company today, you need to be in a thriving, great American city. And I personally love Philadelphia. We wanted to be a bigger part of Philadelphia. So we looked at space and frankly when we saw what was available here at 2400 Market, we knew this was home. And the rest is history.”
Entercom is joined in 2400 Market by Aramark, private equity firm Lubert-Adler, and lifestyle-oriented Fitler Club.
The Business Journal asked Field several questions, including if it “bothered him that Entercom had been based in the region but had no stations” in Philadelphia prior to the CBS Radio deal.
He replied, “To the contrary, I very much enjoyed the anonymity of having businesses all across the country but not in Philadelphia. What changed is that as we had grown into the fourth-largest radio station company for a number of years. But it became clear, that to compete in the changing media landscape, we needed more scale. And scale in radio meant having an outstanding presence in the top 50 markets across the United States. And we had our eyes on the CBS Radio acquisition for years and were finally able to make that happen two years ago almost to the date. And that put us in the position where we could better compete against other media companies for a larger share of customer spending. Also to have the scale to invest in growth initiatives and new business opportunities that we think are really important to our future.”
