McCormick Construction, a premier builder shaping the culture of buildings and businesses throughout the Western United States since 1914, has announced the completion of renovations for the Westwood One campus in Culver City, California, a 45,000-square-foot radio broadcast facility. The campus, which is owned by CIM Group, consists of three buildings – two adjacent and one across the street – located at 8935, 8965 and 8944 Lindblade Ave. Cumulus Media recently acquired Westwood One, which added sports, news, talk, music and programming services enabling Cumulus to provide a wider variety of options to approximately 10,000 U.S. radio stations, in addition to other media and international platforms.
McCormick, who was the general contractor and led the design-build engineering, was charged with renovating and re-configuring the existing radio broadcast facilities to accommodate the additional radio stations and programs Cumulus Media owns, including KLOS, KABC, The Big Time, NBC Sports Radio and Zach Sang and the Gang. This comprised constructing 21 radio broadcast studios with a sound transmission class (STC) rating of 55, with nine of the studios built to include video/television broadcast standards; the installation of 37 private offices, 75 cubicles, conference rooms and new kitchens; upgrading two existing server rooms and adding a new server room; and exterior building modifications.
“It’s been an honor working on this renovation as we have completed a number of projects for Westwood One in the past,” said Michael McCormick, CEO of McCormick. “We were pleased to be able to assist the client in creating state-of-the-art studios for their employees while creating an optimal listening experience for their consumers.”
Further, McCormick oversaw and facilitated structural and MEP engineering plans, fire-life-safety plans and provided coordinated oversight between Westwood One’s electrical engineering team and Southern California Edison’s engineers to install additional electrical power services.
“The team at McCormick has a sophisticated understanding of the specific requirements for broadcast and recording studios and has worked with some of the most well-known studios in Los Angeles,” said Eric Wiler, Senior Vice President, Westwood One. “Through careful planning and phased construction, McCormick ensured we remained fully operational and mitigated disruptions throughout the construction process.”
During construction, major sections of the facility were fully operational while being occupied by Cumulus Media talent and support staff. McCormick worked closely with the project team members to overcome a number of challenges during the construction process. To achieve the high STC rating, McCormick installed pre-certified, custom manufactured STC-rated windows and doors that minimized sound vibration. McCormick also worked to attach studio ceilings to a exsisting brick wall in a way that would be aesthetically pleasing, yet structurally sound, and allowed for sound isolation between the adjacent buildings.
The facility, which was originally built with brick walls and bow truss roofs for manufacturing users in the 1930s, was first converted into a state-of-the art radio broadcast facility for Westwood One by McCormick in 1984.
The McCormick project team included Alan Hartley, director of tenant improvements; Andre Miyao, project manager; and Matthew Skinner, superintendent. Additional project team members included DCA Architects, architect; and MMSE, structural engineer.
This project joins a number of other McCormick-constructed broadcast and recording studios in Los Angeles, including additional renovation projects at Westwood One’s campus; CBS Radio’s 60,000-square-foot ground-up facility; and the remodel of KROQ Radio Station.