SXSW 2010 Music Festival
With less than 3 weeks to go before this year’s fest, the updates are flying. Latest news | Side parties | Full coverage | Follow us on Twitter | Send us tips.
Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > January > 07 > Entry
Fire closes KOOP’s new studios
Community radio station 91.7 FM KOOP is off the air after a fire broke out between Saturday night and Sunday morning at the station’s Airport Boulevard studio.
There were no injuries, Austin Fire Department spokeswoman Michelle DeCrane said, but the building and equipment sustained $100,000 and $200,000 in damage, respectively. The investigation into the fire is ongoing, and no causes have been ruled out.
“We’d like to get back on the air as soon as possible, but it looks like it will be a few weeks before we can use the building again,” KOOP President Andrew Dickens said. “We’re looking into contingencies to get back on the air sooner than that, and we’re hoping to have more information later this week.”
Other businesses on KOOP’s side of the building include the City Theatre and the Neighborhood Acupuncture Project. Dickens said both sustained smoke damage.
“We’re trying to get our insurance companies together to get this all settled,” he said.
The fire struck two years to the day after a Jan. 6, 2006, blaze in the station’s old home on Fifth Street did an estimated $600,000 in damage and knocked KOOP off the air for a week.
It was 23 months after a much larger fire Feb. 4, 2006, destroyed the entire Fifth Street building, a location that included inexpensive band rehearsal space and Sweatbox Studio, the dirt-cheap recording facility that had hosted dozens of Austin bands since the early ’90s.
Fire officials determined that a malfunction in a heating and air-conditioning unit on the first floor of nearby Club Taste started the final blaze, which caused $2.7 million in damage.
After spending months operating out of borrowed studio space at KMFA (89.5 FM), KOOP moved to new studios at 3823-B Airport Blvd. in December 2006.
KOOP was founded as a community-operated radio station in 1994, splitting time on 91.7 with UT’s student station KVRX. Focusing on an eclectic mix of music and special-interest programming, the station offered access to the airwaves for nearly anyone whose ideas fit the station’s mission.
But defining that mission has been a source of constant debate; for many years, the station was known as much for its infighting as for its diverse and compelling programming. Until Sunday, the station had never seemed more stable.
But bitter feelings about past controversies still linger. Former KOOP DJ and founder Jim Ellinger, who was fired from the station in 1999, held a news conference outside the KOOP studio Monday, the smell of burnt plastic and rubber still in the air.
“The reason KOOP radio keeps burning down is their own bad karma,” Ellinger said.
Dickens declined to comment on Ellinger’s news conference.
Comments
Click here to report comment abuse.