Berkeley – On the evening of January 18, the Pacifica Foundation board formally approved and accepted a loan put together by the organization’s members in Southern California to pay off a pending judgment to the Empire State Building and keep the organization out of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

The member loan is a short-term bridge loan intended to pay off the judgment immediately and transition the organization into a 3-year line of credit that will follow.

The three to three and a half year timeline will allow Pacifica to explore several options to pay off long-term debts and finally get clear of the extortionate Empire State deal that swallows so much revenue without having to engage in fire sales, and retains the organization’s independence. Continue reading The End Less Near – Pacifica Board Approves Loan →

Berkeley – This is a very happy update to send.

Friends of Pacifica in Southern California have now secured bridge loan funds of $2 million dollars to pay off the summary judgment amount to the Empire State Building. An escrow account has been set up and full payment will follow shortly afterwards. Full payment of the  judgment due will remove the threat of asset seizure.

Huge thanks to the Southern California community which worked together to locate the much-needed funds in record time. Continue reading Paying Off The Judgment →

Berkeley – (Editors note: After more than three and a half years of regular weekly bulletins, Pacifica in Exile did not come out for the last eight weeks. The primary reason for that has been to avoid providing surplus information to Pacifica’s main creditor, the Empire State Realty Trust, that could hamper negotiations. At this point, however, we believe the member’s right to know has to be the priority, and since various members of the Pacifica community have been putting out information of varying levels of accuracy for some time now, we decided the time was right).

When we last left off publication, Pacifica had been hit with a $1.8 million summary judgment from the Empire State Realty Trust for back rent from 2013 to 2017, The rent is for WBAI-FM’s transmitter which broadcasts from the iconic NY skyscraper. A 15-year lease had been signed in 2005 by very temporary IED Ambrose Lane, a WPFW broadcaster who presided briefly between Dan Coughlin and Dan Siegel. The lease was signed under somewhat mysterious circumstances in that members of the 2005 board of directors have not confirmed that they saw it or reviewed it prior to signing. The lease took full advantage of the skyscraper deficit in New York City after the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001, hiking the rent abundantly every year for a decade and a half until 2020, where it topped out at more than 3/4 of a million dollars a year, a prohibitive amount for any community radio station.  Continue reading What The Dickens Is Going On? →