Working With Design Firms p.

WHILE THERE IS much to do before building or adding to a newspaper plant or office, there are many people who can help.
Several large architectural and engineering firms have divisions that specialize in newspaper plant construction and provide the necessary architectural and engineering services.
And there are smaller firms that work with local architects and engineers, providing the necessary expertise in newspaper manufacturing.
Some newspapers hire architects or engineers to help with site selection and planning; others use facility planners as intermediaries between their production people and outside architects and engineers.
These intermediaries often call themselves facilitators. They provide long-term planning and research to achieve goals set by management.
At the New York Times, David Thurm, executive director of project development and administration, heads such a group. His staff organizes committee meetings with everyone who will be involved with a new facility, including maintenance people.
From such meetings come informed decisions that everyone can live with, he explained.
Thurm, a lawyer, took on the task of facilitator after helping draw up purchase agreements for the newspaper's Edison, N.J., satellite plant. His staff began planning another satellite plant for the Times in New York after the Edison plant was up and running this year.
Among the goals that facilitators may pursue are companywide standards for software.
"You can't have islands of automation," Thurm said.
At Phoenix Newspapers Inc., Robert A. Guenther is director of property and facilities. His department selects sites, does studies to determine their suitability, and proposes a building program with mechanical systems and presses specified before architectural firms are approached.
"The process starts very early," with feasibility studies and assessment of current resources, he said.
Guenther's current project is a new office building across the street from the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette in downtown Phoenix. Printing in the downtown headquarters ceased after completion of a Deer Valley plant two years ago.
Another satellite plant, in Mesa, was completed 10 years ago, and planning is under way for a third one on property that the company owns in Tollison, along a rail line. Guenther said this plant will give the newspapers production facilities east, north and west of the city.
One advantage that newspaper managements have, compared with other types of firms planning manufacturing facilities, is the spirit of cooperation in their industry, no doubt because newspapers in different cities rarely compete with each other.
Guenther suggested that anyone planning a newspaper facility "see other plants built recently." He and others from Phoenix visited "15 or 20 newspaper facilities" before building the one in Deer Valley.
Architectural design considerations have changed with the advent of satellite production facilities for newspapers, but image is important as are relations with the local business community.
The architect for the Deer Valley plant and Phoenix office building is a Los Angeles firm, Daniel Mann Johnson and Mendenhall, which has local standing because it bought a Phoenix architectural firm.
Ken Harding, president of the Ble-vins Harding Group of Boulder, Colo., makes local content a big part of his pitch. His firm, which specializes in newspaper facility design, works with local architects and engineers. Harding said 80% of the design fees stay in the community.
He said his firm works with a newspaper from early planning and site selection through construction, building a local team and managing it.
Local considerations are not just economic. The Concord (N.H.) Monitor had outgrown its downtown building but wasn't about to build a satellite printing plant in a flat-top box, said its publisher, George Wilson.
A new building had to fit into the New Hampshire landscape and "not do any visual damage," Wilson said.
The site selected was "land formerly used for grazing cows," he noted.
The architect, Pellegren Corp. of Denver, was asked to design a building in keeping with the traditional New England farm of the 19th century.
Wilson said that called for "a big house, little house, back house and barn." The little house was the kitchen and the back house was a shed, he explained. Pellegren's design connects a three-story office structure (the big house) and a large printing and distribution facility (the barn) with a narrow section containing the stairwells and prepress and plate rooms.
Pellegren also was asked to design the buildings with hip roofs.
"Flat roofs don't do well in this climate," Wilson explained. "We get a lot of snow."
Some solar heat also was requested, he said. This was accomplished with an all-glass stairwell that faces south.
The result, the publisher said, is an "extremely efficient building."
The newsroom and advertising are on the second floor, with their output flowing through the prepress and platemaking departments on the same floor to the paper's double-wide flexo press.
While everyone agrees that it helps to get expert advice from the beginning, the advice doesn't have to be from the same firm that designs and builds the facility.
Bigger firms point to their ability to do everything in-house, but they, like their smaller counterparts, will work with whomever the client selects for specialized designs, such as ink systems, or do studies without a commitment for the design contract.
Jon Witherspoon, vice president and general manager of the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, said his company had a planning study done by Blevins Harding, then awarded the design contract to Chicago's McClier Corp. on the basis of price, "compatibility with people here" and experience.
The newspaper's plant is under construction, with completion expected next year. The site is two miles from the newspaper's downtown building, its home since 1926.
Witherspoon said prepress will remain downtown, with pages transmitted over telephone lines. The paper will be fully paginated by then; pagination is now at 80%, he said. The area vacated by the production and circulation departments will be used for much-needed office space, he said.
The new plant site was bought five years ago for a warehouse but was not used because low-cost rental space was available, Witherspoon said.
Alan Stromberg, president of McClier's Newspaper Group, said he preferred to become involved "early in the game" and to help formulate a "new operating plan," but he was very pleased with the progress at the Winston-Salem plant.
"Until you've thought through what you are going to produce and how you are going to produce it, you don't know what kind of building you need."
Stromberg said local soil engineers are almost a necessity when working out of town, and local landscape designers know what grows in the area. Though his firm often becomes partners with a local architect, he said, "It is important to hold the engineering under tight control."
Not every newspaper that builds a satellite plant can use the space left over when production is moved out of a downtown building. The Baltimore Sun this year moved its production to Sun Park, on the west side of the Fort McHenry Tunnel, still in the heart of Baltimore, leaving its downtown building on Calvert Street with much unused space.
Jerry Babacz, Sun facilities manager, said Goss Colorliners needed for the pressroom just wouldn't fit into the Calvert Street building. For the new plant, the Sun used Rich Olson, a Denver architect, and Parsons Main of Boston for the engineering.
Richard Rowse, manager for printing process engineering at Parsons Main, has a background in newspaper production, as do many engineers in this field.
Rowse said his firm was able to provide all services needed for design and construction of any newspaper facility, including architectural design and process and mechanical and civil engineering.
Another full-service firm is Lockwood Greene Engineers Inc., with headquarters in Spartanburg, S.C. Michael Luciano, manager of Lockwood Greene's New York-based Newspaper Division, said experience is essential in newspaper facility design.
Architects and engineers must be on the cutting edge of innovations, he said, ready to cope with such developments as the "tailored newspaper," which allows readers to receive different sections according to their tastes.
Leonard Elliott, vice president, newspaper facilities, at the Austin Co., Cleveland, said large firms such as his are better able to produce what customers want.
Elliott said his company, which he called the largest full-service firm in the world involved in newspaper construction, could design and produce a newspaper plant on a lump-sum contract basis, something that other firms couldn't do.
John Collier, director of architecture at Lendrum Associates, Phoenix, touted the benefits of smaller firms such as his — for example, at the outset, customers get to meet the people with whom they will be working, not just a marketing team.
Collier said industrial plant design has changed to meet safety, health and environmental regulations and because of efforts to address human aspects of the work place.
He called those efforts a "pro-active approach toward dealing with the welfare of your employees."
• (Architect's model of the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal's new production plant.) [Caption]