Radio Station KPTZ 91.9 FM should be able to move from the Mountain View Commons to Makers Square at Fort Worden by early in 2024.

The move has been slow-going. KPTZ first announced its partnership with the Fort Worden Public Development Authority near the end of 2017, with the goal that the station could relocate from the 900-square-foot portable building that it leases from the City of Port Townsend into the 2,100-square-foot basement of Building 305.

This would make the station part of the Fort Worden Lifelong Learning Center, following the Port Townsend School of the Arts, which opened in Building 306 in 2016.

KPTZ Interim General Manager Taylor Clark estimated at least a quarter of the $1.5 million raised by the radio station for the transition went into supporting the costs for construction that could accommodate the rules and regulations of refurbishing an officially designated historically significant building, which are particular about preserving even the existing paint.

Between those conditions and the onset of COVID in March of 2020, KPTZ Board President Robert Ambrose recalled that the basement of Building 305 didn’t receive its certificate of occupation until September of 2021, “which simply gave us permission to enter the space.”

Since then, Clark and Ambrose credited logistics coordinator Karen Anderson with acting as a project manager and directing the efforts of the station’s nearly all-volunteer staff, as plans to relocate radio equipment from the existing station to the new one have given way to simply replacing most of that equipment with more modern technology, designed to serve the station’s needs into the future.

“All of our equipment at Mountain View is at least a dozen years old already,” said Clark, who asserted the importance of equipping the new station with “the next generation” of audio tech so that it could remain compatible with the next several coming jumps in radio capability.

“This makes one of our biggest remaining hurdles training up our volunteers on the new equipment,” Clark said.

Ambrose pointed out that the newer technology is designed to be “analogous” to the existing equipment, so users will find it familiar, but conceded they’ll still need to “demystify” the aspects that are changed from what the station’s staff are accustomed to.

“To a certain extent, part of the job of our production staff is to use that new equipment enough to break it,” Clark said. “Tech folks can’t always anticipate the needs of end users.”

Ambrose and Clark reveal their affinity for radio broadcasting whenever they gush over details such as the suspended ceilings, which limit the vibrations that can make their way into the recording studios.

Of the station’s complement of roughly 100 volunteers, Clark’s goal is for about half of them to be trained up by the time the switchover between station sites is made, and he added that switchover will need to take place in a single day, without any holdover operations remaining at the existing site.

The managers have prioritized which systems need to be in place before the final move is made, versus which remaining “technical challenges” can be fixed sometime after they’ve fully moved into their new home.

“What we’re trying to do is get key personnel trained up first, so that they can take part in training others,” Clark said.

After what Clark described as the “monumental efforts” of radio station personnel, he looks forward to seeing what they can do with double the number of production studios (from two to four), with more microphones and studio space to accommodate on-air guest dialogues and debates, as well as an area big enough for a full band to perform live over the air.

“It’s a matter of when we can rip the Band-Aid off,” said Clark, who cited the listener-supported radio station’s current expenses of paying for utilities at both of its studio locations.

“Karen has always been conservative when people have asked about the timeline, to the point that it’s become like the old joke about how the war will be over by Christmas, but we just don’t know which year. With any luck, it’ll be closer to Christmas this year,” he laughed.