The Kansas City Star to move from downtown building, shift printing operations
The Kansas City Star will leave its iconic glass building downtown and look for a new home, the newspaper announced Tuesday.
The Star will vacate its building at 1601 McGee St. by the end of 2021. As part of the transition, the newspaper will move printing to a third party, beginning in the first quarter of 2021.
The changes come after parent company McClatchy, which owns 30 U.S. news organizations, including The Star, The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February. The reorganization, which was approved by a federal judge in early August, allowed the company to renegotiate leases. Publications across McClatchy and the news industry have seen similar print consolidations.
“Leaving a huge office space that is way beyond our current needs allows us to realize savings that will sustain other operations as we continue to align expenses with our digital transformation,” said Star President and Editor Mike Fannin.
“This move will help us stay deeply invested in our journalism.”
Fannin said the search would begin soon for new, smaller office space.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, most news staffers have been working remotely since March and will not return to the office until they can do so safely.
The Star sold the building at 1601 McGee St. in 2019 to Ambassador Hospitality, LLC and entered into a lease-back agreement.
Printing of The Star will move up Interstate 35 to the Des Moines Register, which is owned by Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper publisher.
“Although our news deadlines will be earlier,” Fannin said, “our production schedule will remain materially the same and our readers will receive their newspapers as usual.”
The Star’s copper and glass building opened in 2006 featuring four state-of-the-art presses. The $200 million investment preceded other major downtown developments such as H&R Block’s headquarters and the Power & Light District that have made the city center a prime destination.
The Star building stretches two blocks long and is a landmark visible from Interstate 670. In addition to Kansas City’s newspaper, presses have printed a variety of national and local titles, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Wichita Eagle, the Lawrence Journal-World and the Topeka Capital Journal.
The printing transition means 68 full-time and 56 part-time Star production employees will be laid off and be eligible for severance.
In recent years, many newspapers have consolidated printing operations and costs as the business of news gathering increasingly emphasizes digital operations.
In 2018, Star employees consolidated into the McGee Street building from the historic headquarters at nearby 1729 Grand Blvd., The Star’s home for more than 100 years. Developer Vince Bryant is redeveloping that structure into a mixed-use project called Grand Place.
As part of the bankruptcy reorganization, longtime investor Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey hedge fund, paid $312 million for McClatchy, the nation’s second largest local news company. That sale closed September 4.
Founded in 1880 by William Rockhill Nelson and Samuel Morss, The Star was previously owned by the Walt Disney Co. and Knight Ridder Inc. before its 2006 acquisition by the McClatchy Co.
