When Consolidated Publishing Co. executives saw the 22-acre parcel of land on the former Fort McClellan, they knew this was it — home.“It’s fair to say we fell in love with it,” said Ed Fowler, vice president for operations.
Three years and $16 million later, a field of waist-high kudzu and yellow jackets has been transformed into the 78,000-square-foot Consolidated Publishing Co. headquarters on McClellan Boulevard.
The building is home to The Anniston Star as well as a central printing and distribution plant that serves the two daily newspapers, four weekly newspapers and nine advertising publications that Consolidated Publishing Co. pub-lishes.
In the case of The Star’s press capacity, size does matter. Increasing the capacity is what set the process of con-structing a new building in motion.
“From a production standpoint, we were stymied in the size of the product we could print. (The new press) gives us the flexibility to print color,” Fowler said. “Something had to be done because we had outgrown the old building.”
Members of the Consolidated Publishing Co. board of directors considered several options before deciding to build a new building. One idea was to expand the old press in the old building on 10th Street, which was ruled out because there wasn’t enough room. Other ideas included turning the old building into a press building and getting a new of-fice or getting a new building for the press and turn the old building into the office.
While these ideas would have solved short-term problems, they would not have solved the over-crowding issue, Fowler said.
A new building was the only option.
After a year of considering structural options, the board then spent about a year acquiring property and considering construction designs.
The board had a list of criteria for the new construction site. It had to be at least 10 acres; have access to transporta-tion, since the site would be a distribution site for all of Consolidated Publishing Co.’s publications; and be fairly close to downtown.
Three sites were considered, but one was too expensive, and the other was not developed.
There were some unexpected kinks in the land acquisition. The Army had just begun clearing the land at the former Fort McClellen. The board had to convince the Army to clear the part of land it wanted to buy before the other parts, so construction could commence.
Then, area businessmen filed a lawsuit challenging the legal authority of the Joint Powers Authority to sell the prop-erty. The Star’s lawyers intervened in the case because The Star has a vested interest in the property.
In June 2001, the board accepted a bid from Brasfield & Gorrie LLC, and the land clearing promptly began. The ground breaking was held on Aug. 2, 2001, and 53 weeks later on Aug. 12, 2002, the building became home to around 170 employees.
“I don’t know of anything else they could have done to accommodate the employees,” said Almus Thornton, treas-urer of Consolidated Publishing Co. “It’s really spacious and quiet.”
“We’re excited to have The Anniston Star as our neighbors,” said Cheryl Bragg, executive director of the Anniston Museum Complex. “The facility is beautiful, and the surroundings are natural. It’s a good fit in Lagarde Park.”
This fit is exactly what Chris Waddle said the board envisioned in his “The Stars and the Trees” Insight column published in the Aug. 29, 2001, edition of The Star.
“The sum of our aesthetic vision is balance in all respects — industry with nature, artful design with practicality, re-spect for our roots with the willingness to serve as change agent for the common good,” Waddle wrote in the col-umn.
The Star board hopes this building will be an anchor for the up-and-coming McClellan community.
“This building is certainly a statement of belief in the future of this community,” said H. Brandt Ayers, Consolidated Publishing Co.’s chairman and publisher. “It’s also the first building, from the ground up, to be established in what is literally the new town of McClellan. I hope it will be an example to how the new town is developed.”
Ayers envisions the McClellan property as the cornerstone of a new research-based development because of its lo-cation between clusters of research universities.
The new building was designed with growth in mind.
“Our architect designed this building so that we can live in it for 10 years with the growth pattern,” Fowler said.
The press capacity can be doubled without having to do anything in the terms of infrastructure. Plus, the building is made up of 64-foot-by-64-foot squares, which makes adding on to it not only easy, but would only cause a minimal distraction to the existing employees, Fowler said.
“I don’t know if a chain newspaper would go to this extent, but I doubt it,” said Phil Sanguinetti, president of Con-solidated Publishing Co., of constructing the new building. “We’re local, and we don’t have any plans to move out of here.”
