In a windowless conference room in the Municipal Building hang the floor plans for WNYC’s new offices at 10 Hudson Square, a neat accumulation of lines forming studios, reporters’ desks, and a bicycle room.

Last year at the public radio station’s annual gala, these plans were a dream. At tonight’s gala, board members and patrons will be celebrating progress: Construction starts in January, and a move-in date is scheduled for July.

The move is the culmination of work begun 10 years ago, when the station paid the city $20 million for its licenses at 820 AM and 93.9 FM. With independence came a vision, then a concrete plan, for expanding WNYC’s square footage, programming, and staff size.

Now WNYC has set the plan in motion, as well as a $57.5 million capital campaign to finance it. So how did it happen? Some of the key players will be at the gala tonight, such as WNYC’s new landlord, the president of Trinity Real Estate, Carl Weisbrod.

Mr. Weisbrod, formerly the president of the Downtown Alliance, wanted the station to stay downtown. He also knew the station fit Trinity Real Estate’s portfolio of creative industry tenants in architecture, advertising, graphics, and publishing, such as Rem Koolhaas’s firm and the Weinstein Company. Within months of his arrival at Trinity Real Estate, WNYC had signed a 20-year lease. Though neither party would disclose exact figures, by all accounts Trinity Real Estate was accommodating. “We are market-driven, but clearly we stretched and were creative to do this deal,” Mr. Weisbrod said.

Public support provided the necessary up-front capital. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation gave $1.5 million. The city pitched in $10.1 million.

“It’s a way for the city to help us complete our independence,” the president and chief executive of WNYC, Laura Walker, said, noting that the city has provided WNYC its offices in the Municipal Building rent-free for 80 years, even after WNYC purchased the licenses. The funding also acknowledges WNYC’s increased quality and listenership since becoming independent, as well as its higher profile nationally, earned with programs such as “Radio Lab” and “On the Media.” The station says it has 1.1 million unique listeners each week.

“The vitality of what they present to their listeners and the way they portray the city and the multiplicity of points of view are really quite extraordinary,” the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, Kate Levin, who is a WNYC board member and will attend the gala tonight, said.

“We are one of the biggest deliverers of culture in the city,” Ms. Walker said. This is an important point because the board believes it is the key to completing the campaign and sustaining WNYC in the future.

“The challenge is from the philanthropy side: People see a need to support us by becoming members, but it’s important for us to attract the large gifts that New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are accustomed to receiving,” Ms. Walker said.

At its new digs, WNYC will be looking more like these cultural institutions with a street-level black box theater. Think along the lines of the “Today” show studio, with outdoor speakers connecting passersby to the programming inside, except instead of Matt Lauer, Brian Lehrer or Leonard Lopate will be in the host seat. In fact, WNYC’s architect, TPG Architecture, designed the “Today” show studio. A senior producer for what is now being called the Live Performance Space, Indira Etwaroo, started in September.

The space is part of a trend in commercial and public broadcasting to provide a physical connection that deepens the relationship with the listener, viewer, and, in the case of a nonprofit, the donor.

There will also be changes on the air, starting in early 2007, when the first new program funded by the capital campaign makes its debut in a midday slot. The talk show, which doesn’t yet have a name or a host, will incorporate young and diverse voices, while appealing to the middle-aged, white listeners who dominate the current audience.

“The city itself will make this show a success,” the deputy director of the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit, Orlando Bagwell, said. The Ford Foundation has given $4 million to the campaign.

The program team worked with the director of community affairs and audience development, Brenda Williams-Butts, to identify potential hosts and guests at events in predominantly Asian, Latino, and black neighborhoods.

“We will never go through another development cycle without her again,” said WNYC’s chief creative officer, who oversees programming, Dean Cappello.

Mr. Cappello also wants to work on the tone of WNYC’s programming. “We’re looking at a much more personal style. Informal, energetic, not trite. Not so highly processed as most of public radio sounds today,” Mr. Cappello said.

Only time will tell if New York will tune in — and support a larger organization. In 2011,WNYC will cost $40 million to run, an increase of 37% over this year’s $29.2 million budget. Rent accounts for some of the costs, as does a staff increase to 225 from 160 (including a doubling of the newsroom).

WNYC isn’t disclosing how close it is to completing its $57.5 million campaign, although Ms. Walker assures it’s going well. Perhaps the chairman of the capital campaign committee, Alexander Kaplen, will have a figure for guests at tonight’s gala, which is at Cipriani 42nd Street. And perhaps those who have already given will sit back and enjoy the gala program emceed by a public radio favorite out of Chicago, Ira Glass of “This American Life.”