Saying ‘goodbye' after 3 decades on Bannock
In March 2020, most Rocky Mountain PBS employees began working from home due to COVID-19 and were never able to return to work at 1089 Bannock – the station’s home for nearly 30 years in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood.
While a mid-summer move to the Buell Public Media Center in the Ball Park neighborhood had been planned for years, no one expected such an abrupt exit.
For one last look around the building – and a trip down memory lane – Tom Craig, a longtime RMPBS technology and engineering team member, hosted a virtual tour of the Bannock building this summer, accompanied via video chat by Laura and Buzz Sampson, founders of, and volunteers with, the RMPBS Station’s Archived Memories (SAM) group.
Craig revealed a few of the building's little-known secrets. Deep in the basement, a massive walk-in safe dates back to the building's use as a Packard car dealership. And, in one of the conference rooms, a large mirror conceals a secret storage space that is rumored to have held a previous tenant's libations. (KUSA was located in the building before RMPBS moved in.)
The tour also stopped by the Bannock "tape library" that held almost 16,000 tapes with recordings of past productions. As part of leaving Bannock and decommissioning the library, the tapes were inventoried by SAM and a digitization process began.
So far, 129 programs have been digitized and posted to the American Archives of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) site for viewing, and there are about 300 additional tapes being processed to post. SAM volunteers have painstakingly transcribed the uploaded programs for accessible reading and searchability on the AAPB site.
Reflecting on leaving Bannock after so many years, Craig finished the tour by comparing the move to the Buell Public Media Center to leaving high school for college: “While I look back with fondness on this building, and the people I worked with in the building, it’s time to move on.”
Now, as the new year approaches, Rocky Mountain PBS, along with KUVO JAZZ and THE DROP, have relocated to the new Buell location. While most staff are still working remotely, the organization is looking forward to welcoming the public into the new building, and a new chapter in the history of Rocky Mountain Public Media, just as soon as it can.
A picture of Craig from early in his career was featured on a mural in the Bannock entryway that was created by SAM for the station's 50th anniversary in 2006. Also featured are early station managers, hosts, producers, and the infamous Ms. Bird.
The mural was the first thing most staff and visitors saw when entering the building. (View the video for more panels of the mural and the vintage portrait of Tom Craig working with Super School News student producers.)
