FALMOUTH — Despite being offered free rent and upgraded equipment, WCAI — the Cape and Islands’ National Public Radio station — will have to leave its longtime home at the Captain Davis House this fall for a new location in Falmouth. It’s a move that has coincided with the firing of a respected staffer and baffled listeners.

WCAI employees were stunned to learn in October 2024 that WGBH — one of Boston’s two NPR stations and WCAI’s parent company (which now calls itself “GBH”) — had made plans to sell the historic Woods Hole house from which the station has broadcast since it first went on the air in 2000.

A local effort to save the station’s home ensued, and the Woods Hole Community Association (WHCA) purchased the building for $1.8 million in January 2025. The group offered WCAI five years of free rent, but GBH has refused that offer, with radio silence from the Boston organization as to the reason why.

Instead, GBH has opted to foot the bill for renovations to create a new space for the station on Cape Symphony’s Falmouth campus, located about four miles away from the Captain Davis House and outside the center of Woods Hole.

Alecia Orsini Lebeda, a line producer who worked at WCAI for almost nine years and who is a contract worker for GBH, said the decision to sell WCAI’s building — and the way it was communicated to employees — left many unsettled.

“Those of us who were in the building up at WGBH in Boston, we knew about it before they did, and we were surprised,” she said.

Lebeda said many WCAI employees didn’t find out about GBH’s plans to sell the Captain Davis House until building inspectors arrived in October.

“If their argument to that sort of insensitivity — of not alerting a manager or alerting staff or having a meeting — is that they don’t have the time or resources, then that’s a big problem,” she said. “That is a big organizational issue if you cannot have full circular communication to the people who are your core content creators.”

The decision to sell the building was made because WCAI was “operating with a budget deficit,” according to an October letter sent to the station’s employees from GBH CEO Susan Goldberg. The next month, in a press release, Goldberg wrote that WCAI “is losing about $500,000 every year” and can “no longer afford to stay” at the Captain Davis House.

But with GBH rejecting the community association’s subsequent purchase of the house and offer to have WCAI in the space rent-free, many of those affiliated with the station doubt that a budget deficit is what’s behind the move, said longtime donor and Boston College law professor Zygmunt Plater, who is close to several executives at the station.

“If there is a rational explanation, it has never been given in the face of the real facts of the five years rent free,” Plater said. He added that he thought the community association’s offer to update and restructure the dilapidated space to improve it for the station was being ignored.

In July, Plater sent an email outlining his concerns to the GBH Board of Trustees. He received a reply from Tina Cassidy, GBH’s chief marketing officer.

“In short: we need a new studio not only due to the costs of managing the historic building but for operational reasons, as well,” Cassidy wrote. “The WCAI studio must meet ADA and FCC requirements, and we want a space to welcome the public. While we appreciate the offer of free rent from the WHCA, it would be unethical for a news operation to accept such favor.”

Plater was unconvinced by Cassidy’s reasons. “It started out being financial, and once the financials were taken care of, no, it was now something else,” he said.

GBH typically raises roughly $50 million, or 18 percent of its annual operating budget, from listeners, according to the organization’s 2024 annual report, but the parent station does not disclose how much of that total comes from WCAI’s fundraising campaigns.

A GBH spokesperson declined to answer a reporter’s questions about which ADA and FCC regulations Cassidy was referring to in her letter to Plater or to explain the ethical issue involved in accepting support from the community association.

For some, speaking up about the station’s move seems to have carried consequences. In June, Steve Junker, then the managing editor in WCAI’s newsroom, was fired after asking questions about the station’s relocation.

“That was a mistake, and it feels retaliatory, and there’s no two ways about that,” Lebeda said of Junker’s firing.

Goldberg issued a statement after Junker’s departure in which she wrote that the decision to fire him was a result of “structural changes that will cut expenses and our workforce to reduce our budget gap.

“Layoffs are never our first choice,” she wrote. “We’re sad to have to say goodbye to colleagues and grateful for their contributions. … WGBH remains committed to being the most innovative, trusted, and impactful public media organization in America.”

Two current WCAI employees declined to speak with the Independent for this story out of fear they could lose their jobs if they did.

Junker’s departure left WCAI without a managing editor. His duties were piled onto the few remaining staff, straining an already overworked newsroom, said Amy Vince, who has worked at the station since 2001 and produces The Point, a public affairs program hosted by Mindy Todd.

“This place has always been like an extended family,” she said. “As people are being laid off or are leaving, there’s a real sense of loss — both to the community in the building and to the listening community.

“People are doing more than one job,” Vince added. “And because people are so committed to the station, to our sound, and to our listeners, they’re working really, really hard and a lot of extra hours — and that’s not tenable.”

That stress is likely to increase in the coming months. In July, President Donald Trump signed a bill slashing roughly two years of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which supports local public radio and television stations.

And on Aug. 1, the CPB announced it was beginning to shut down, putting local stations across the country in jeopardy.

A GBH spokesperson wrote in a statement that they were “doubling down on local journalism” despite the cuts.

“This is an imperative time for anyone who cares about local news to contribute to WCAI and WGBH,” the spokesperson wrote. “We’re doing everything we can to protect the future of the trusted reporting that the Cape and Islands rely on.”

Jay Allison, WCAI’s founder, said that he wants to keep the focus on the future. But right now, he said, rebuilding trust between the local station and GBH is what’s imperative.

“GBH, if it’s interested in this community, needs to restore trust,” Allison told the Independent. “This isn’t a private corporation not giving up its recipe for its soft drink — this is a public media entity that exists to serve the community.”

Allison said WCAI’s relocation isn’t the only area where communication has fallen short. He also flagged a lack of financial transparency. WCAI is not able to raise funds independently from GBH. Allison said people often ask why they can’t donate directly to WCAI. He doesn’t understand the reason, he said.

“The question is, ‘Why can’t you?’ ” said Allison. “I think that would help restore trust, and it would be a great boon to localism.”