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June 2020 \ BUILDING DIALOGUE \ 81 A collaborative, new era for public media comes alive in Denver’s Arapahoe Square Buell Public Media Center WORDS: Kevin Criss W hat was once a neglected warehouse with a needle-strewn parking lot at the corner of 21st and Arapahoe streets in Denver is now Buell Public Media Center, the new, one-of-a-kind hub for Colorado’s leaders in public media and journalism. When it opens next month, Buell Public Media Center will be home to Rocky Mountain Public Media, parent company of Rocky Mountain PBS, KUVO and sister station The Drop, as well as Rocky Mountain Public Media’s COLab, a shared working space for up to 90 local journalists from The Associated Press, The Colorado Independent, KGNU, Colorado Media Project, Colorado Press Association, The Colorado Sun, Chalkbeat, Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition and Open Media Foundation. The three-story, $35 million building is a tech-forward, eye-catching anchor in the evolving Arapahoe Square neighborhood. The first floor of the 65,000-square-foot facility will feature an expansive lobby, 125-seat Masterpiece Theater, green screen studio, a live-performance broadcast studio, a production studio, a children’s learning and programming center, class- rooms, volunteer offices and conference rooms, community kitchen and event space, café with outdoor seating and private courtyard. The second floor will be home to Rocky Mountain Public Media’s offices, KUVO and The Drop broadcast studios, KUVO offices, a lounge, members-only listening library, edit and production suites and the technological core need- ed for beaming media content to the world. The third floor will be home to the COLab and a rooftop deck for private events, meetings and taking in the stellar views of the Denver skyline. Be- low grade is a 30,000-sf parking structure with 84 parking spaces. A Vision for Something Greater Amanda Mountain, president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Public Me-