McCormick Construction has completed major renovations for the 45,000-sq-ft Westwood One radio broadcast facility campus in Culver City, California. The campus, which is owned by CIM Group, consists of three buildings – two adjacent and one across the street.

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.

The work, which completed this week, comprised of 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.

Michael McCormick, president and CEO of McCormick Construction, told me that one of the biggest challenges his company faced on the renovation was keeping the campus studios fully operational for the Cumulus Media employees during construction.

"In order to accommodate, McCormick and the rest of the project team developed a detailed schedule, sequencing the projects in phases so employees could still broadcast live from an existing building while the other building(s) were offline being remodeled," says McCormick. "Maintaining broadcast capability is extremely important to radio stations as lost air time means lost advertising dollars – a major source of revenue for the industry."

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.

Other aspects of the job included McCormick overseeing and facilitating structural and MEP engineering plans, fire-life-safety plans and providing 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, in a news release. “Through careful planning and phased construction, McCormick ensured we remained fully operational and mitigated disruptions throughout the construction process.”

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.

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-sq-ft ground-up facility; and the remodel of KROQ Radio Station.