November 28, 2008
New Mexico Business Weekly
UNM acquires KASA building to expand medical facility
by Steve Ginsberg Special to NMBWThe $2.1 million deal was struck last winter but took seven months to be approved by the various state agencies that fund the university. The acquisition includes a 17,000-square-foot building on three acres that lie adjacent to the current construction site of an $85 million cancer research hospital.
UNM planners are evaluating the former television studio building and its acreage, considering how it will link with adjacent operations, including an outpatient surgery and imaging services building and a smaller office building to the north. The new Cancer Research Center is located just south of the former studio.
“We are always looking to buy land on the periphery of the University,” said Tom Neale, assistant director of real estate at UNM. “We felt we paid a fair price for the KASA building. It gives us the possibility of expanding our clinical operations.”
The deal was brokered by Max Sklower, a partner in Broadcast Realty LLC, and Stan Byars, another former television station executive. Sklower managed KOAT Channel 7 from 1958 to 1987 and oversaw the land acquisition and the studio’s construction in 1962. KOAT later moved to a facility at Comanche and Carlisle.
The site was purchased by KASA-TV Channel 2 in 1975 and the station later became a FOX affiliate. In 2006, KRQE-TV, a CBS affiliate, purchased KASA. The owner of KRQE is LIN Television Corp. of Providence, RI, the company that sold the property to the university.
In 2008, KRQE expanded its present Downtown studios, at Coal and 12th Street SW, to accommodate KASA’s staff and most of the equipment that was at 1377 University Blvd. NE.
Many of the top television news personalities in the Duke City worked in the building during the course of the studio’s nearly five-decade existence.
“I got the listing in March and within 14 days we had made a deal with the university but it didn’t close,” Sklower said. “It had to get approved by three state agencies, including the Board of Regents and the Educational Finance Board. I’m happy that the deal closed this [past] Monday.”
The New Mexico Board of Finance was the last state agency to sign off on the deal, on Nov. 18.
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