In December 2017, a 1kw radio station long known for its gold-based Adult Contemporary format and past ownership by Cumulus Media and, later, Townsquare Media, agreed to purchase a 163-year-old octagonal home on a main thoroughfare in the midtown section of a small Mid-Hudson Valley city that was undergoing a renaissance after a quarter-century of neglect.
With the help of WSDG — Walters-Storyk Design Group, that is — “Radio Kingston” began its broadcasting operations from the historic structure, which now houses state-of-the-art broadcast facilities. One year later, the reinvented AM with an FM booster, WKNY in Kingston, N.Y., has not only reimagined its broadcast programming but also its studios and offices.
Once a Full Service radio station with CBS News at the top of hour and American Top 40 airing each Saturday morning, WKNY was a powerhouse through the late 1980s. Then came “Docket 80/90” FMs across the region, and the end of “Cable FM” that brought locals radio signals from New York City via coax cable connectivity to the FM Stereo. Eventually, FM stereos faded, as did WKNY’s luster while the region’s biggest employer, IBM, closed its Kingston, N.Y., plant and facilities. Kingston went into a downturn; WKNY suffered.
Eventually, on Aug. 3, 2017, WKNY would unofficially begin its next era — one full of innovation. For $500,000, Townsquare sold the station, which at the time didn’t have its FM translator at 107.9 MHz.
Much of the funding for the acquisition came from a grant from The NoVo Foundation, co-created by Peter Buffett and his wife, Jennifer.
And, they helped facilitate the purchase of the Bonesteel Building on Broadway, along with its complete reconstruction. This was completed by WSDG in June 2021; a transition from old offices and studios adjacent to a fabled Chinese restaurant, Eng’s Tea, happened a month later.
Jimmy Buff, who serves as Executive Director of “Radio Kingston,” which is today a noncommercial education station offering eclectic musical and informational programming with a focus on underserved communities, commented, “One of the reasons we wanted this space was the super-sized windows facing Broadway. We imagined people seeing us and us seeing them while we made radio for our city and it was quickly apparent that concept had been turned into reality when we started working in the new studios.”
It’s a far cry from some commercial radio broadcast facilities, with offices and studios tucked behind a major thoroughfare, out of plain sight.
Buff also provided input in the act of re-conceiving the Bonesteel house, with a pledge to be as advanced as possible. “Making the place structurally sound not only for the purposes of containing a radio station but also for its historic value was paramount for us,” Buff said of the structure, which was converted to commercial use — roughly 115 years ago.
There was also the desire to retain localism in everything “Radio Kingston” touches. This extends to the work WSDG did. “While WSDG is worldwide in scope, Storyk and the WSDG team were just down the road in Highland, N.Y., and have kept involved with a variety of recent high-profile local projects as well,” Buff shares. “During our initial meeting we walked through the Bonesteel House, vacant for several years at that point, and found ourselves pretty much on the same page in all the key areas. We agreed to work together on the design with WSDG.
By optimizing the entire existing 910 square feet earmarked for the first-floor studios, WSDG developed an “open space” on the second floor encompassing offices, including a conference room and kitchen.
“Radio Kingston’s new studios utilized an ‘adapt and reuse’ approach to repurposing the original two-story octagon building,” WSDG Partner/Project Manager Matthew Ballos says. “The building had excellent bones, but its unusual eight-sided configuration and center-floor fireplace/chimney presented a considerable challenge to space optimization. Fortunately, a close inspection of the fireplace assured us that the chimney had no structural significance.”
Thus, the chimney was removed, providing enough open space to house a 250 square foot on-air live studio; 160 square foot talk studio, a 75-foot talk studio control room and a 100 square foot Production Room. “We also added a third floor-to-ceiling window and replaced all that glass with double-paned soundproof material,” Ballos says.
Buff is still impressed with the results. “The sound, or lack of, inside the studios is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There was major road construction just outside the studios last year when we moved and while you could feel it — the ground literally shook — you couldn’t hear it,” Buff said.
Equally important to aesthetics and studio functionality was the infrastructure to keep the station on the air no matter what.
As a result, WKNY features a comprehensive rooftop solar panel installation, previously reported by RBR+TVBR. That is backed up by three Tesla Powerwall batteries and is linked to an off-site community solar farm as well as the local power grid. Radio Kingston Technical Director Kale Kaposhilin was an integral part of that design, and worked closely with WSDG’s team of mechanical engineers to ensure a robust system with significant backup was established.
“Our commitment to energy resiliency proved essential during a February 2022 ice storm that knocked out a wide swath of power and cable lines in the City of Kingston and surrounding Ulster County,” Buff shares. “Two thirds of the homes and businesses were without heat, power and Internet connectivity for days. We remained on-air throughout the blackout and helped local officials communicate important information to our neighbors here in Kingston. That connection is essential to our mission. Having just celebrated our first anniversary in the space, we can attest to theory becoming reality and thank our partners at WSDG for sharing our vision.”
“As a global company we recently completed Rue Boyer, a World Class ‘Destination Studio’ in Paris; Sonic Den, a high-end studio in Mexico; and a major new Production Campus for Spotify in Los Angeles,” said WSDG founding partner John Storyk. “We’re loyal fans of Radio Kingston and were very pleased with the opportunity to apply our skills to reimagining an historic octagonal building as a 21st Century Broadcast Center.”
All photos by: Joseph Janisheski, Lightroom Studios Photography, West Milford, N.J.
