Cumulus Media’s deal to sell the 75-acre parcel in Bethesda, MD that is home to its four towers broadcasting a butterfly pattern blanketing the nation’s capital with conservative talk WMAL-AM (630), inched closer to its end game with a required public meeting last Saturday. About 150 neighbors to the site packed a school auditorium to pelt homebuilder Toll Brothers with the usual questions on how a new settlement of 328 homes would change their lives. Traffic, in a city rated as the worst traffic jam in the nation, is of course their biggest concern.
While those in attendance took little comfort in the fact that the new neighbors wouldn’t be bums — of the 328 homes, 170 would be single-family detached and 158 would be town homes – each priced at a starting price of about $1 million each – the gathering met one of Montgomery County, MD’s requirements that such open discussions be held by the developer. When the financially troubled Cumulus put the tract up for sale early last year hoping to pay down some of its enormous debt – estimated by some to be $2.5 billion — it also put its prized KABC Los Angeles property on the market, hoping to fetch nearly $125 million.
Broadcasters selling the land where their stations’ towers stand, and radio groups selling dozens of their towers in a package have become a one-time cash generator for the former titans of the airwaves. Reached by Inside Towers last week, one radio group head acknowledged that he is preparing to cut a similar deal for the company’s nearly five dozen stations in a dozen-and-a-half markets. “We are getting ready to make a sale-leaseback deal for our towers. Isn’t everyone selling their towers these days?”
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