Ft. Wayne Newspapers Press Building Wins Second Award

By: E&P Staff Fort Wayne (Ind.) Newspapers has won a second award for the design of its new, 46,000-square-foot press building.

The largest and most visible part of a near-$35 million production project largely completed last winter, the plant is expected to be in full operation by fall, when papers roll off a new TKS press.

For the six-story brick building (see E&P, Nov. 2005), local historic-preservation organization ARCH Inc. bestowed on Fort Wayne Newspapers its Archie Award for "outstanding new construction in a historic district."

The Archie follows the Downtown Improvement District's presentation to the company in mid-January - a Hard Hat Award, honoring investment that improves downtown Fort Wayne.

For its Archie, the building was cited for its compatibility with others in the neighborhood. Size, materials, and design quality were among selection criteria. Only two other buildings have received the award since it was created in 2000, according to ARCH Inc.

The project's architect, Dario Designs Inc., Marlboro, Mass., said in a statement that its objective was "to reflect the downtown community of the West Central neighborhood and other historical structures."

Praising the structure's design, detail and materials in contrast to what the company might have erected elsewhere at lower cost, the city's preservation planner, Don Orban, remarked, "You don't have to do a Disney replica of a historic building," according to an account in The Journal Gazette.

Earlier this month, The News-Sentinel Publisher Michael J. Christman was quoted calling the project "a nice opportunity for us to be a participant in downtown. We're a strong believer in downtown, and this is an example of it."

Christman also is CEO of Fort Wayne Newspapers, which jointly operates the locally owned Journal Gazette and Ogden Newspapers' News-Sentinel. Both companies are family owned. Ogden, based in Wheeling, W.Va., bought the News-Sentinel from The McClatchy Co., not long after the latter's acquisition of Knight Ridder's newspapers.

Designs efforts extended to the newspapers, which will have narrower pages printed on a narrower web. Ball State faculty member Jennifer George-Palilonis, who grew up in Fort Wayne reading the Journal Gazette, led the redesign group there, according to a report in that paper.