The Midpeninsula Community Media Center has purchased a building located at 900 San Antonio Road in Palo Alto for $2.139 million. The building is just under 10,000 square feet and has a second floor over the front portion. The property includes a parking lot with 24 parking places. "The building was remodeled extensively in 1997 by a dot.com that spared no expense and has a very creative feeling to it," said Executive Director Annie Niehaus, "We are so lucky to have found such a great deal. We plan to move in as soon as possible. We do have a few tenant improvements to make, like building a new studio."
Purchase of the new facility was made possible by the members of Cable Co-op. When they sold the system to AT&T, the Cable Co-op board of directors negotiated a donation from AT&T (now Comcast) to support community access television. "We are deeply grateful to the members of Cable Co-op for making the new facility possible," said Seth Fearey, president of the board of the Media Center. "The new building and equipment will allow us to make higher quality shows in a much more modern and welcoming setting. I can hardly wait to hold an open house."
The Media Center plans to update its program playback system when it moves. The outdated manual system is equipped to play programs on the two community channels and one government channel. We will replace it with an automated system that will handle five channels. When Comcast completes the cable system rebuild scheduled for late July, the Media Center will gain two channels, including a second government channel. Comcast is also building an Institutional Network (I-Net) to provide high-speed connections between public buildings and school districts for all of the cities in our service territory. The I-Net will allow the Media Center to cablecast live programming from city councils and schools throughout the service area, even as it enables one school to connect directly to another school.
The Midpeninsula Community Media Center provides communication resources to help people understand, participate in, and shape the community in which they work, live, learn, and play. We offer classes, lend equipment and produce programs that showcase our community.
The Media Center serves the communities of Atherton, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Stanford, and included unincorporated portions of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.
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