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WMNF stretches out in new home

FM station workers hum happy tunes as they move into a $2.2-million building.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published February 19, 2005

TAMPA - Put down the newspaper. Turn your radio dial to WMNF, 88.5 FM. Can you hear the music?

If so, it means a new era has begun successfully at Tampa's feisty, 25-year-old independent radio station. Friday night marked the station's last broadcast from the cramped, cozy digs off E Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that it has called home for 17 years.

Starting today, WMNF officially switches its signal - not to mention its studios, news center and nearly 50,000 CDs and 20,000 LPs - to a brand new, $2.2-million building next door.

"It's somewhere between ecstasy and exhaustion," said station manager Vicki Santa. "A lot of people thought it was a pipe dream and that it would never happen. We got it done, and I think we got it right. It's been an awful long time coming."

The station started in 1979 inside a house off S Boulevard in Hyde Park. The bathtub served as a record library then. The station then moved into a small space off Nebraska Avenue, a spot now home to a Kash n' Karry parking lot. In the 1980s, WMNF settled into the little bungalow on MLK.

The new building, bright gold and red, has 13,000 square feet of space, nearly four times that of the old station next door. It has six studios compared to three, a much roomier music library, state-of-the-art broadcasting equipment and an actual break room, something the old place never had.

Don't underestimate the joy in having a break room, where a sign on Friday read: "On this spot on Jan. 13, 2005, the first pizza in this new building was eaten. 11:45 a.m."

Joy floats freely around the new facility, mostly in the smiles and laughter and awe of the employees and volunteers.

"I can't believe it," volunteer Ona Fessenden said. "It's just so much better."

But Santa said the deepest satisfaction comes from knowing that listeners, through their generosity, gave this $2.2-million gift.

"This did not come from big corporate dollars," she said. "Our huge source of money is thousands and thousands of people. It validates the work we've done for 25 years. The community believes in this station."

While they are now surrounded by so much newness, the veterans of WMNF need only walk a few steps for a dose of nostalgia. The old building will stay, if only for a while.

That brings comfort to "Soulman" Bob Scheir, who's been with the station since 1981.

"There's a certain closeness that you hope is never lost," he said. "Just being in there, it was a good feeling. That place, it felt warm, friendly."

Friday afternoon, Scheir pondered what to play on his evening blues show from 9 p.m. to midnight. He would be the last one to sign off from the old station.

The Soulman planned to have some old friends in the studio to reminisce. To take a few calls from listeners. To sip an "adult beverage" or two, because what better occasion to bend the rules? To play some Chicago blues, maybe some Johnny Copeland, maybe some Albert Collins or Little Milton or Fats Domino.

To finally sign off at midnight, a little reluctantly, with a track from King Curtis, blowing his saxophone as the signal fades out.

[Last modified February 19, 2005, 00:56:09]