Media
A new home for IradOne, and a new name on the door
The broadcaster’s glass tower downtown cost $61 million, a third more than budgeted. It is named after the chairman of its board.
From the Irad Times of 14 September 2017.
IradOne moved into its new headquarters in downtown Talas this month: twelve floors of studios, edit suites and satellite uplinks behind a glass front on the central avenue. The building’s name is written over the door in steel letters three metres high: the Alikhan Media Center.
Alikhan Toktarov has been chairman of IradOne’s board since 2015. Asked why a building paid for from the state budget carries the name of the chairman of the company that occupies it, IradOne said the name “honours the leadership that made the project possible”.
Budget documents show the building was approved in 2014 at $46 million. The final cost, according to the Ministry of Finance’s report on capital projects, was $61 million. The main contractor was a company that has also built for the Talas Commercial Development Group. IradOne said the overrun was due to “specialist broadcast equipment and currency movements”. The som has been fixed to the dollar since 2008.
The broadcaster’s old studios on Kalinin Street, built in 1971, are to be sold. No price has been announced.
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