BNN goes green and digital with new location

Talia Whyte

Boston Neighborhood Network Television (BNN) will finally move into its new Egleston Square studio at the end of November, the start of a new and exciting chapter in the 23-year history of the public access TV organization.

The network’s new home will be the old Egleston Power Station at 3025 Washington Street in Roxbury, built in 1909 by the MBTA to convert power for the elevated Orange Line until the line was relocated in 1986. The building remained vacant for nearly 20 years until BNN teamed with local nonprofit developer Urban Edge to purchase the property in 2005.

Before construction started a year ago, the building consisted of only one very large room. When work is completed before Thanksgiving, BNN will move into a space with offices, classrooms, suites and two studios on two floors.

As it stands, BNN has three locations, with studios in the Transportation Building downtown and in the Mall of Roxbury, and its news department, housed in Boston University’s College of Communications. The downtown and Roxbury offices will move to the Egleston site; the BU location stays put.

According to BNN General Manager Curtis Henderson, the benefits of the new location are twofold: the combining of the two locations will enhance efficiency for BNN, while bringing the network closer to the populations it wants to serve.

“We have had several locations around the city over the years,” Henderson said. “This new location will finally give us a home where we can build some branding in a place where people know where we are.”

The building will be registered on the National Register of Historic Places. All of the existing shell of the building and at least half of the interior space will be maintained — even the original crane that carried generators for trains will remain in the back of the building. BNN hopes to give historic tours of the site when construction is complete.

Since 2004, BNN has raised $7.2 million of the $8.7 million needed for the building project through its capital campaign. Most of the money has been secured through the City of Boston, National Parks Service, The Mabel Louise Riley Foundation and Citizens Bank. The network hopes to raise the rest of the money through donations from a combination of individuals and institutions, as well as a gala event.

The new building will also be going “green,” as it will be the first project in Egleston Square to be given Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. Topping a long list of green initiatives the network will undertake, BNN’s new home will incorporate a geothermal heating and cooling system that will be 30 percent more energy efficient than the existing structure.

Once the building opens next month, it will be named the Charles J. Beard II Media Center. Beard, a founding BNN board member, was a champion for telecommunications law and community media in the city. As the first African American to be named a partner at a major Boston law firm, Beard was instrumental in negotiating a cable television contract for Boston under Mayor Kevin White. At that point, he understood the power of community media as an outlet for social change.

Since its inception, BNN has given community members the training needed to create their own programming on its two channels, viewed by thousands of Bostonians. Community members, college students and over 50 nonprofit agencies produce programming on a wide variety of topics, including housing, employment, health care, politics and the arts.

As one of the few networks in Boston that reaches underserved and non-English speaking residents, BNN targets these populations with special programming. Last year the network embarked on a grassroots public information campaign to address health disparities among black, Latino and Asian Bostonians with a variety of TV programs and public service announcements broadcast in English, Spanish and Cantonese.

With the new location, Henderson hopes to expand on BNN’s vision of social activism by increasing programming and training for youth and nonprofit organizations, not only in the immediate Jamaica Plain and Roxbury areas, but also in South Boston, Charlestown and Brighton. The Media Center will have a computer room for training in multimedia applications like Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

In an era where YouTube and other Web sites have made downloading video online commonplace, Henderson recognizes that the future is in digital media. In years past, community members had to come to BNN’s studios to produce and edit their films. Today, they can do all the production work at home on their computers and will be able to just drop off their videos at the Media Center. A satellite dish will also be installed on top of the building, intended to enable the network to download a wider variety of educational programming for the community.

As Henderson sees it, it’s interesting — and perhaps appropriate — that a building once used to transform electricity is being refurbished to provide a new kind of power for the community, in the form of digital media.

“This is really a digital revolution going on,” Henderson said. “Creating a digital economy has been a great opportunity to reach out to the community.”

The move will officially take place next month, but after giving the network some time to settle in, Henderson says BNN hopes to host an open house for the community in the spring. For now, Henderson is excited that BNN is taking this new step forward in Boston’s television history, a step he hopes will put the network on a path toward greater things.

“This really gives us an opportunity to really reach out to the community,” he said. “I can’t say enough; this is going be a great place to come to.”