One of the lesser-known aspects of our purchase of 89.3 from UMass Dartmouth in 2017 was that we entered a formal partnership with the university that had several obligations. Most, if not all, of which we would want to do anyways, but the nice thing about the partnership is that we get to share resources with a fully-fledged state-run University. One of them is that we hired a new South Coast reporter (Nadine Sebai) and agreed to construct a physical remote office/news bureau for covering the South Coast of Massachusetts. We had a bunch of discussions with UMassD about where was the best place to put it, and we eventually settled on Rm.163 of the College of Visual & Performing Arts in downtown New Bedford…better known as the “Star Store“.

We purchased a 9x12ft “SoundLok” Wenger soundproof booth, the centerpiece of the facility. The room is large enough to also have four office desks (two employees, two interns/temps) and a conference table. You could comfortably fit three to six people out there, depending on how boisterous the conversations are. The booth itself can hold one to four people, and in theory you can use both areas at the same time, even for recording! The room itself is fairly quiet most of the day, thanks in part to the century-old construction of the Star Store; lots of foot-thick concrete and brick.

Inside the booth we have an Allen & Heath XB-14-2 mix console, three permanent RE20 mics (we can accommodate a fourth if needed), a Comrex VH2 VoIP “phone hybid” (Callcentric provides the service) for recording phone calls, and a Comrex BRIC Link for connecting back to the main studios in Providence for live events. A dedicated laptop runs Adobe Audition for recording/editing, connecting via the A&H’s USB port. A repurposed car stereo provides over-the-air monitoring of 89.3 (car stereos make amazingly good receivers, and I had a spare already mounted in a rack panel). And a Henry “Superelay” provides control for the nifty lucite/LED “on the air” lights outside the booth that light up and blink automatically whenever the mics inside are hot.

Outside we put a lot of work into decorating the room in a way we thought would be both pleasant to look at AND provide a measure of respect to our host city as much as possible. All pics were taken by your Intrepid Engineer using an iPhone 8S (yes, really!) and then blown up to 24x36in posters at BuildASign.com. The charts are reusable wall decal nautical charts from West Marine. The yellow roadster poster is from a limited run that the great artist Bob Conge did as NPR pledge gifts way back in 1993 and we’ve held on to a few ever since.

2023 Update

In the summer of 2023, UMass Dartmouth was unexpectedly evicted (on very short notice) from the Star Store. TPR was subleasing from UMass, so the Bureau had to leave as well. As of January 8, 2024, no new location has been identified.