Ledger-Enquirer moving to Broadway's Hardaway Building

The Ledger-Enquirer, which has been at its current 12th Street location since 1930, is moving to a prominent office building on Broadway by the end of January.

Ledger-Enquirer President and Publisher Rodney Mahone made the announcement to employees during a meeting Tuesday, saying the relocation to 945 Broadway, in what is known as the Hardaway Building, came after an extensive four-year search process.

He also said it demonstrates the Ledger-Enquirer’s commitment to downtown Columbus, even as the print publishing industry becomes smaller as more and more readers turn to online sources for news and information.

“I think that people have been concerned about what happens to us: Are we going away? And we are not going away,” Mahone said. “More people have access to our news than anytime in history. But we are moving into a facility that is more conducive to our needs now. We don’t need production areas. We need technology because of the platforms that we produce news and information on.”

Mahone said the Ledger-Enquirer will be locating in 17,000 square feet of office space inside the Hardaway Building, from the 170,000-square-foot property the newspaper and its myriad staffs have called home for 85 years. The newspaper has been operating since 1828, the same year Columbus itself was founded, earning Pulitzer Prizes in 1926 and 1955.

The Hardaway Building, which dates to the 1890s, but was renovated into its current design in 1987, sits across Broadway from the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts. The Springer Opera House, the Columbus Convention and Trade Center, and Columbus State University’s RiverPark campus facilities all are adjacent to the property.

Mahone said the Ledger-Enquirer and its staff will occupy the entire second floor of the Hardaway Building and a portion of the ground floor, where customer service will be located for those needing to make payments and conduct other business they have done for decades at the current location at 17 West 12th St.

“It will be the exact same access,” the publisher said. “Customers will be surprised to have a better aesthetic, or a better facility, to come in to. But they will be able to get the same services that they were able to get here in this location.”

For the 90 Ledger-Enquirer employees — about a third of them newsroom staffers — the building will be outfitted with the latest technology to help them break and monitor news around the clock, Mahone said. That will include more Internet bandwidth and flat-screen monitors and TVs.

At the same time, the newspaper will be leaving an aging office complex that has being targeted by Columbus State University for an expansion of its RiverPark campus. The university wants to purchase the property and locate its College of Education and Health Professions on the site.

Mahone said the acquisition process is ongoing, although he’s “very hopeful and very optimistic” that the Ledger-Enquirer and CSU will reach a deal by the end of this year.

The move to the Hardaway Building, however, will be made regardless, he said.

“It really is a good situation to be able to get all of the amenities that we wanted — location, signage, the appropriate amount of space — and then to deal with someone like Fred (Dodelin) and Mr. (Mason) Lampton, who have really partnered with us in this whole process,” Mahone said.

Lampton is chairman of Columbus-based Standard Concrete Products, and Dodelin is executive vice president and chief financial officer of the company that manufactures restressed and precast concrete products for industrial and commercial projects.

The company has plants in Tampa, Fla., Atlanta and Savannah, Ga., with its roots traced to the Hardaway Contracting Company, which built everything from bridges to dam to highways through the years.

The 50,000-square-foot Hardaway Building, which housed that company and now is the home office of Standard Concrete Products, is owned by family-owned business, Lampton Realty, which soon becomes the Ledger-Enquirer’s landlord.

Asked Tuesday why the newspaper makes a good tenant, Dodelin responded: “I think from our standpoint, a high-quality tenant with high-quality credit on a long-term lease, what else would a landlord want?”

The Ledger-Enquirer has entered a 10-year agreement with Lampton Realty, which Mahone said shows the newspaper’s resolve in remaining a major force in the local market.

“I think the quality of the building shows that we’re serious about being a media company and continuing to be the lead source of news and information in the marketplace,” he said.

Ledger-Enquirer Executive Editor Dimon Kendrick-Holmes said he was “thrilled” that the newspaper is remaining in the downtown area.

“There’s more energy and excitement down here than ever before,” he said. “But most of all it puts us in the middle of everything we cover — north Columbus and Harris County, south Columbus and Fort Benning, other surrounding counties and, of course, East Alabama.”

Dodelin said work to prepare the office space for the Ledger-Enquirer is now under way and there is plenty to be done. Both the landlord and the newspaper are making “substantial” investments in outfitting and furnishing the new space, Mahone said.

Once the newspaper is fully relocated to the Hardaway Building, Dodelin said it will be 100 percent full. Standard Concrete Products’ offices are on the top floor, along with a group of local attorneys. Other tenants on the ground floor are financial firms, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Ameriprise.

Mahone said the Ledger-Enquirer now is seeking warehouse space to locate its newspaper distribution operation, which is presently done at the 12th Street location’s loading dock. The newspaper outsourced printing of its newspaper in 2011, which further reduced its overall staffing number and prompted the desire to find a smaller place to do business.

The Ledger-Enquirer is owned by Sacramento, Calif.-based The McClatchy Company, which operates 30 newspapers in 15 states, including the Sacramento Bee, Kansas City Star, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Miami Herald. The company purchased the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain in 2006.

This story was originally published October 14, 2014 at 7:10 PM with the headline "Ledger-Enquirer moving to Broadway's Hardaway Building."