A.G. Gancarski
On Saturday evening, Florida Times-Union President Mark Nusbaum announced to employees via email that the 1 Riverside property, the iconic HQ of the T-U for decades, will be put up for “sale or potential development” in the next few days.
The email claims that the paper is on “sound financial footing” and will “continue to operate without interruption” no matter what.
While “committed to maintaining a significant presence in Downtown Jacksonville,” the email asserts that “development of our 19-acre property on the St. Johns River just makes good sense.”
Technological developments, moreover, mean less space is needed for “housing and parking” for employees.
Expect to read more about this in the Florida Times-Union Sunday. In the online piece posted Saturday evening, Nusbaum had this to say to readers:
“Newspaper-based companies across the country are adapting to the explosion of digital technologies,” said Nusbaum. “Most of their buildings were designed to accommodate industrial typesetting machines that have been replaced by computers, requiring substantially less space. Digital communication also means that, while offices like the newsroom and advertising can remain in the central city, the presses and distribution facilities can be located on major truck-transportation routes.”
Rumors of potential movement along these lines have circulated for some time, with employees’ interest becoming piqued by the frequent presence of surveyors at the property in recent weeks.
Those same employees, it turns out, got their email from the company president at the same time the piece went online.
Morris Communications, the paper’s parent company, has a new president and a new CFO since April.
The CFO comes from the St. Augustine Record, which ironically is a sister paper of the T-U that uses a lot of the Jacksonville paper’s content.
