Next: "February 20th"
Previous: "February 6th"
February 14th
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 @ 11:03 EST
It's been an exciting few days, so let me recap it for you. Firstly, last week we got the news that the roof of the Garfield / Garport buildings would support the antenna. Matt, the engineer, and I went to visit the site on Thursday to see for ourselves what it looked like. After that, the engineer went over to the owner to work out any final details. That's when it went sour.
Apparently, the Owner told Ed the engineer that he was tired of all of this and that he didn't want do go through with it anymore. This led to a flurry of phone calls to our contacts that were in the position to convince the Owner otherwise. On Monday morning, I heard back from Matt. Through his connections, he was able to find out that the Owner was reluctant to work with us because of the actions of certain students. While we were unable to figure out what it was specifically, we believe it had something to do with Israeli Apartheid Week and a certain student group's involvement last year.
With some more phone calls, we were finally able to speak to the Owner. We made it clear that we weren't involved with this group nor supported their actions (we are an unbiased media organization.) He conceded that, while he had mentioned it in passing, this was not the key reason why he was reluctant to go forward. Apparently, he was a little leery of working with Ed, the engineer. He also said that if we can get an engineer to look over the building and put his stamp of approval on it, he will have no problem going ahead with the project.
In response to all of this, I am doing several things. Firstly, I have made contact with various commercial real estate agents in Montreal and have them looking for an alternate site for our antenna, just in case things end up falling through at Garfield/Garport. Secondly, I am getting in touch with some structural engineers to see if we can have someone else come in and look at the buildings.
Now, a word on changing sites. If we do find a new, suitable site, we still need to weigh our options before immediately accepting it. By moving sites, we may be delaying our launch even further. We would have to prepare a new technical brief (1-2 weeks) as well as apply for a location change with the CRTC. The location change approval for Radio Shalom took 2 months. I'm not saying that we are guaranteed a long delay, but there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration in choosing our location.
I'll keep you informed as information develops.
Ryan:
"Israeli Apartheid Week and a certain student group's involvement last year."What the hell?
Posted on 02/15/2007 05:28 PM EST
March Towards AM - February (775k)
March Towards AM - January (705k)