~30,000 square feet, including massive open space, suites of offices, and crazy hidden nooks and crannies (where postal inspectors once kept secret watch on the staff).
$218,000 goes a long way in east-central Illinois. The IMC already has about a third of that on hand, and the rest, it is hoped, can be paid by renting out space to other groups and such. The potential for a performance space nearly dwarfs anything else available off-campus. The post office still maintains a station in the building, but as tenants ($1 a year for the next ten): Uncle Sam say hi to your new landlord!
This has been a long time coming, and I’ve only been here a year, so the gory details of how the deal came to pass are vague to me. One of the building’s first new uses will be as home to WRFU-LP, Radio Free Urbana, which has to be on the air by June 19, according to the FCC construction permit. It promises to be a busy summer.
Hopefully a rejuvenating one as well: since I’ve been around the UC-IMC’s been in kind of a rough spot, with a portion of its founding volunteer base drifting away and some divisiveness involving IMC process on some touchy subjects. I do think part of the reason why the IMC went large was in hopes of drawing new blood and energy into the group. The ride should be fun either way…
Skip to content