SYRACUSE — WCNY, Central New York’s public-broadcasting company, on Oct. 30 formally opened its new, 56,000-square-foot broadcast and education center at 415 W. Fayette St. in Syracuse.

WCNY moved into the new facility earlier this year after having previously operated at 506 Old Liverpool Road in Salina.

“It was always my feeling that we, as a PBS station, really belong in the middle of a neighborhood,” says Robert Daino, president and CEO of WCNY.

Its previous location on Old Liverpool Road is located on a busy, four-lane highway that made it difficult for people to “walk up” to the facility and “engage” with WCNY, he says.

Daino believes that community engagement should be part of any public-broadcasting station.

“We wanted to re-identify and reinvent ourselves, and what better place to be than an entire neighborhood [Near Westside] that had the same mission and goal,” Daino says.

WCNY was also “running out of space” in its Old Liverpool Road location, where it had operated since 1965.

The operation involves media that includes television and radio broadcasts, along with content production for print and social media. WCNY wants to continue expanding, growing, and delivering services, programs, and projects that people “demand and expect,” Daino says.

“We really needed to be in a different kind of facility than the existing facility would allow us to be,” he says.

Paula Kerger, president and CEO of Arlington, Va.–based Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and New York Education Commissioner John King spoke at the Oct. 30 ceremonies to mark the occasion, the organization said in the news release.

Construction and payment

The project’s construction and capital costs totaled about $20 million, according to a WCNY fact sheet on the project. The organization used both private and public funding to finance the project.

The funding sources included a $4 million bridge loan from JPMorgan Chase & Co. WCNY is starting a capital campaign to pay off that loan.

It also used $6.2 million in equity from a federal new markets tax credit, which Daino emphasizes is “private-equity investment money.”

WCNY also received a $2.5 million Near West Side Initiative grant.

In addition, WCNY also used a $2 million Empire State Development (ESD) City-by-City grant and a $5 million ESD Restore NY grant to help pay for the project.

“What we tried to is leverage the use of some taxpayer investment from the state, such as the [ESD] City-by-City [grant] and the Restore New York [grant], which are economic-development dollars that are used as catalysts for projects like this,” Daino says.

WCNY is funding the remainder of the project with foundation funds, individual gifts, and pledges.

King + King Architects, LLP of Syracuse designed the building, and Hueber-Breuer Construction Co., Inc. of Syracuse served as the contractor on the project, according to WCNY.

Subcontractors included the Syracuse location of Victor, N.Y.–based O’Connell Electric Co., Inc.; Century Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. of DeWitt; the Syracuse office of Milwaukee, Wisc.–based Johnson Controls, Inc., according to Daino.

In addition, Burns Bros Contractors of Syracuse was in charge of the plumbing work; Sposato Floor Covering Co. of Salina handled the flooring work; the Syracuse office of Morristown, N.J.–based Schindler Elevator Corp. worked on the facility’s elevators; and Sedgwick Business Interiors of Syracuse supplied the furniture for the new facility, he adds.

King + King designed the building to achieve Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) platinum status, Daino says.

The U.S. Green Building Council is currently considering WCNY’s application for platinum status.

“We haven’t yet been approved. That’s going through that process. We feel comfortable that we will achieve that because it was designed and built with all those constraints,” Daino says.

The building’s roof includes solar panels, which are intended to help WCNY lower its energy costs. Its new rain gardens also capture 95 percent of the rain runoff, according to the WCNY fact sheet.

Two buildings make up the campus, including the refurbished 30,000-square-foot former Case Supply building, and the new 26,000-square-foot technology building that includes studios and the space leased to Centralcast, LLC that provides television content for nine PBS stations in New York and New Jersey.

The facility also includes WCNY’s 10,000-square-foot education center, which occupies the third floor. The center features education programs including Enterprise America, described as a hands-on learning program for high-school students to learn about entrepreneurship in a “simulated city,” the organization said.

About WCNY

WCNY is a private, tax-exempt, nonprofit organization and member-supported PBS affiliate.

The organization employs more than 70 people, according to the WCNY fact sheet.

Its broadcast area encompasses about one-third of upstate New York and reaches more than 1.8 million people in 19 counties, the organization said.

WCNY broadcasts five digital television channels, including WCNY, Create, World, Plus, and HowTo, the fact sheet says.

It also broadcasts three primary radio channels, including Classic FM (91.3 in Syracuse, 89.5 in the Utica–Rome area, and 90.9 in Watertown and the North Country). Its Jazz and Oldies formats are available on high-definition (HD) radio and in streaming audio, according to the WCNY website.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

New York state consumers’ view of the real-estate market is “strongly positive” for the second straight quarter, and the expectation is that this market is “here to stay.”

That’s according to Donald Levy, director of the Siena (College) Research Institute (SRI), which released its latest survey report of consumer real-estate sentiment in the Empire State on Oct. 23.

SRI’s numbers indicate that real estate is squarely in the “thriving zone” in which consumers see steady growth in real-estate values and both buyers and sellers are coming out ahead today and tomorrow, Levy says.

Property values have rebounded, so it’s a good time to buy, and the anticipation among consumer is that buying a home a smart investment, he adds.

“It’s a fair transaction, sellers are getting a fair price, buyers are paying a fair price, so that’s what we’re describing as a thriving zone,” Levy says.

Any advantage that buyers previously held over sellers is now gone, he says. The survey indicates New Yorkers see the statewide real-estate market as a “win-win,” Levy says.

The overall current real-estate sentiment score among New Yorkers in the third quarter of 2013 is 17.7, up 4.2 points from last quarter, according to the SRI data.

The figure is also above the point where equal percentages of citizens feel optimistic and pessimistic about the housing market.

Survey respondents are beginning to say that property values and the overall state of the real-estate market have improved from where they were, Levy says.

“They sense that it’s [the market] strong, and their projection for the future is that it will continue to strengthen,” he says.

Looking forward, the overall future real-estate sentiment score is 24.8, down from 29.6 last quarter, SRI said.

The sentiment figure also indicates New Yorkers expect the overall real-estate market and the value of property to increase over the next year.

Consumers also see the present as an improved time to sell with a score above breakeven at 12.2, up 5 points from last quarter, according to SRI.

At the same time, they also see it as a very good time to buy with a positive score of 12.5, the survey found.

The overall current real-estate sentiment score among upstate New Yorkers in the third quarter is 19.4, up 1.1 points from last quarter. The overall future real-estate sentiment score is 16.9, down 9.2 points from the second quarter.

The future projection is down a little bit from where it was a quarter ago, but it still positive, Levy notes. The figure indicates a “leveling out,” he says.

The research for the sentiment survey has always aimed to find a situation in which sellers are no longer are sitting at a disadvantaged position relative to buyers.

“It is encouraging that people are saying, whether it’s upstate or statewide, that selling conditions have improved, and anticipate that they’re going to be better in the future, but the rate of improvement for sellers is modulating,” Levy says.

Levy acknowledges the positive feeling about the New York real-estate market remains “subject to conditions.” For example, a boost in interest rates could negatively affect the current sentiment. And, any decisions from the federal government that affect the economy or the ongoing recovery could also have a negative impact, he adds.

In the survey calculations, a sentiment score of zero (0) in any category reflects a breakeven point at which the survey measured equal levels of optimism and pessimism among the population relative to the overall market, or buying or selling real estate, according to SRI.

Scores can range from an absolute low of -100 to a high of 100, but scores below -50 or above +50 are both rare and extreme, SRI said.

SRI conducted the survey of consumer real-estate sentiment throughout July, August, and September by random telephone calls to 2,175 New York state residents age 18 or older. As the sentiment scores are developed through a series of calculations, “margin of error” does not apply, SRI says.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com