Pagano and the new DC 2

Executive VP & CTO Chuck Pagano speaks at groundbreaking ceremony for ESPN’s Digital Center 2.

Tuesday was a day to celebrate the homegrown goodness represented by the groundbreaking for ESPN’s Digital Center 2.

“ESPN is a great homegrown success story,” said Connecticut governor, Dannel P. Malloy. “It’s hard to find a better example of homegrown success than ESPN.”

Unless, that is, you consider Waterbury, Connecticut-native and ESPN’s newly promoted Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Chuck Pagano.

“For a proud son of Connecticut to be a part of this process, I am truly humbled,” said Pagano, who began at ESPN in August 1979, even before the network first went on-air. “ESPN is in my DNA. This is my home and I’m not going anywhere.”

Except maybe to the fledgling construction site in the shadow of DC 1 that will be home to the four-story, 193,000 square foot building, slated to be online in 2014.

Among other things, it will house four studios, six production control rooms, 26 edit rooms and will be the eventual new home of the iconic SportsCenter.

The new facility will help foster between 200 and 800 new jobs within the next five years.

“We are creating new opportunities with this building,” Pagano said. “I’m so excited about this project that will allow us to expand our vistas into new media types.”

What those new media types will be is a mystery even to Pagano and his team.

“I don’t have a clue what we’ll be putting in DC 2,” he said. “We are going to format an agnostic facility that will be able to adapt to whatever the new technologies are.”

Offering a potential glimpse into the future, Pagano said to “get used to hearing the term 4K TV,” but didn’t elaborate on what that will mean for ESPN and DC 2.

You can be sure whatever it means, it will have a homegrown flavor to it.

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