How did we get here? What brought us to this beautiful building set down on 22 pristine acres at the tip of what used to be Fort McClellan?Anyone who visited us at our old building on 10th Street knows we were crowded. What a casual visitor couldn’t see was the limitations in our production departments. Without getting too technical about it, we didn’t have enough press capacity: We faced limits on the number of pages that could be printed and how much color could be used in the newspaper.
At the same time, The Daily Home, our newspaper in Talladega, was facing many of the same problems. We had presses in both Anniston and Talladega, and together they were running 35 to 40 times per week. It was clear that we had outgrown our buildings.
In late 1999, we called Dario Dimare and David Hogan, principals in the Dario Designs architecture firm. They specialize in newspaper facilities and have expertise in equipment as well as buildings.
Hogan worked with us throughout the project, leading us through programming, feasibility studies, site criteria, design, contractor selection and construction. He took this job personally, just as we did.
When you walk through this building, you see a lot of Ed Fowler in it.
You see a lot of Chris Waddle in it.
But more than anyone, you see David Hogan in this building. He designed it after hours of consultation with folks at The Star. He designed it after reading books about Anniston and Calhoun County. He designed it after riding around northeast Alabama to find materials made here, from natural resources found here.
He took what he learned of the community, what he knew of us after almost a year of work, and he combined that with his knowledge of how newspapers work. What you see is the result of a collaboration that came together over a period of three years.
I think it worked.
But it took a while to get here. Before settling on a new building, we looked at using the old one as a production center and finding a new home for our offices. Scott Barksdale showed Chris Waddle and me every empty building in the downtown area, but none of them worked as a long-term solution to our problem.
Then we considered using the old building as an office and building a new production center in an industrial park. Estimated renovation costs were excessive and again, it was not a long-term solution. Finally, it made sense to just build a new building.
Fortunately, Consolidated’s board of directors agreed and approved a new building that would house a central production center for all our newspapers and offices of The Anniston Star. That decision was an important one.
Brandt Ayers, Phil Sanguinetti, Almus Thornton and the late Ralph Callahan made more than a financial commitment with that decision. They made a commitment to providing our customers a first-rate newspaper and a commitment to provide those who work for Consolidated a truly creative environment.
The first priority was to find a site. We needed at least 10 acres, with utilities or access to them. The site needed to be close to The Star’s business center and with decent transportation for our centralized distribution plan. We hired Roger Casson to help, and he hauled us around looking at every site that met those basic criteria.
Eventually, we came to the site we now occupy. On our first trip here, we waded through waist-high kudzu, dodging yellow jackets and wary of the unseen snake. But it is fair to say we fell in love with these 22 acres.
It was a difficult courtship.
Before it was over, we knew more than we wanted about unexploded ordnance and the relationships between the Army, the Joint Powers Authority, the civilian contractor working at McClellan and something of local politics.
All the while, Hogan was busily designing a building, this building. And we didn’t have title to the property. We were confident, however, that in the end, we would be able to buy this land, and so we did.
In June 2002, we put the project out for bids. In July, at the end of one of the longest days of my life, we had them in and with a sigh of relief, I realized they were in line with our budget and we could build.
Brasfield & Gorrie had the winning bid. We broke ground on Aug. 2, 2001. Little more than 53 weeks later, we moved in and published the Aug. 12 edition of The Anniston Star from here. Now, a scant six weeks later we can’t imagine being anywhere else.
Those 53 weeks were interesting, rewarding, fulfilling, frustrating, filled with wonder and filled with weariness. Roger Sawyer was our man on the site, and he was here every day, watching as they moved the dirt, poured the concrete, erected the steel, ran the conduit, hung the drywall and performed all the other tasks to build a 78,000-square-foot building. He questioned everything and made the building better for it.
We got to know Chuck Rampy, Brian Moore, Chris Kramer and other contractors. We had times when we were all stressed and perhaps talked a bit too loudly to make our points. But in the end we were friends, I think. Friends who had shared a year of our lives together, friends who had accomplished something together.
In 1959, Col. Harry M. Ayers and Ralph Callahan moved The Anniston Star to 10th Street, into the building we just left. They, too, held a grand opening and invited friends into their new home.
Today, we hope our new friends will enjoy seeing our new home. And we hope you come back often.
It took us a while to get here. We plan to stay a while.
