I want to share a vision with you. It’s visible in a place with a particular view.
I’ve been spending a lot of time at the Warfield Building in downtown San Francisco. It’s the future home of KALW — something I’ve dreamed about for the more than 20 years I’ve worked at the station. And when I look out the window of what we’re turning into The Warfield Commons, I see why KALW and public media exist.
Let me ground this in a little history.
KALW has served the public since 1941. Our job has always been to inform, educate, and entertain people in an effort to create a better world. We’ve always made a point to center places and stories where people feel misunderstood, misrepresented, and mistreated.
Training is in our DNA. We taught women to be engineers during World War II. We’ve worked with school aged students and senior citizens. We support aspiring journalists in colleges and universities and even prisons across the state.
Partnering with groups throughout the Bay Area has always been a priority. We’ve teamed with journalists, artists, instructors, foundations, and grassroots organizers in ways that create community and amplify our collective efforts.
For more than 80 years, we’ve pursued our public interest work while being based in tucked away corners of public high schools. We always imagined how enormously our impact would grow if we could only be more accessible and visible.
In the last two years, that’s all been changing.
In 2023, KALW won a grant to temporarily take over a San Francisco storefront vacated during the pandemic. Our space at 220 Montgomery Street in the Financial District afforded us an opportunity to introduce the news, information, music, and cultural programming we’ve produced for decades to new audiences through live events. We’ve led town hall conversations with local leaders about education, electrification, homelessness, housing, transportation, and more. We’ve held concerts with bands, nationally famous DJs and internationally renowned musicians. We've featured poets, filmmakers, writers and activists, plus all kinds of community members singing Karaoke. We've developed relationships with sponsors who provide us with free food and drinks for our audience every week. We’ve also built a cohort of volunteers who come regularly to set up the room, bartend, clean up after events and spread the word. We became such an integral part of the community, our landlord worked out a deal that enabled us to stay in the space beyond our initial term, providing us the platform to build upon our successes and continue our work inspiring and revitalizing this great city and region.
This period in KALW’s history has been transformative. But the new opportunity we have at The Warfield Commons will be exponentially greater.
KALW partnered with the Community Arts Stabilization Trust to purchase the nine-story building next to The Warfield Theatre. Our station will relocate to the top two floors, and the vision is to populate the others with like-minded, public serving, non-profit organizations. Journalists. Artists. Culture and community builders. I know from decades of experience that making the effort to bring groups together catalyzes creativity and increases our collective impact. Being in an easily accessible location enables us to connect with a greater number of trainees. Likewise, all of our journalists’ ability to report out from a centralized hub greatly enhances their ability to be efficient and effective.
But what makes KALW’s new home so especially extraordinary is that it’s located at a true crossroads of the Bay Area. The Warfield Commons is located at the corner of a five-way intersection where Market Street, 6th Street, Taylor, and Golden Gate meet. And it’s a location where many vastly different communities come together.
It’s a transit hub, with no fewer than 10 BART and MUNI lines located within two blocks of the front door. A constant flow of pedestrians and bicyclists pass by throughout every day. We are next door neighbors to the historic Warfield and Golden Gate theatres, where thousands of people have come to performances for over a century. We’re also a few doors down from the new IKEA — significant as the only large-scale retailer to open downtown since the pandemic began — as well as the neighboring Saluhall Market, which is home to a wide variety of Bay-based pop-up kitchens. Our block was newly named one of San Francisco’s Entertainment Zones, designed for people to come together. And we’re also within walking distance of:
Civic Center Plaza: the meeting place of city, state, and federal offices
The homes of the San Francisco Opera, Ballet, and Symphony, as well as SFJAZZ
Performing arts venues including the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the Orpheum Theatre, ACT’s Strand Theater, Counterpulse, and more
Cultural institutions including the San Francisco Main Library, the Asian Art Museum, the Tenderloin Museum
Our future neighbors include dozens of single room occupancy hotels and people living without homes. It includes some of the most powerful companies leading AI and other technological innovations. We’re also within blocks of San Francisco’s iconic Union Square, cable cars, and other historic tourist attractions.
In short, we’re at the heart of it all.
What that means is that we are positioned to have an outsized influence on the city and this region just by doing what we already have done for decades. We are here to tell stories, build community, and connect and empower people. It’s always been our mission. But now, at the intersection of so many people and forces shaping the Bay Area, in a hub for non-profit organizations dedicated to the public good, we will no longer be hidden from view. We can exponentially grow our influence in amplifying the stories of this region and shaping the narrative of who we are. And that is exactly our plan.
For as long as I’ve been part of the station, KALW has been a reflection of the communities we serve. We are a place of belonging, always doing our best to authentically represent the wonderfully diverse Bay Area we call home. You hear it on the air, see it in our social media feeds, experience it at our live events.
Now, you will find it embodied in our new home. In our work and that of our many partners in The Warfield Commons. I truly can’t wait to shape the future of public media, and the Bay Area, with our partners, the communities we serve, and with you.
I can see it already. It’s right in front of us.
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This piece was brought to you by KALW Speaks, a monthly series of essays from KALW staff and contributors, exploring the ideas that drive our work. Each of these essays reflect our commitment to innovation and invites you into a deeper conversation about the future of public media.
Learn more: From A Whisper To A Roar.
