York Record returns downtown p.125

By: Editorial Staff THE YORK (PA.) Daily Record is going home.
The paper has signed a 10-year lease to return its newsroom and business offices ? including about 65 journalists and business staffers ? to downtown York in time for the newspaper's 200th birthday in 1996, according to plans.
The paper, which left downtown for suburban Springettsbury Township in 1973, is returning to within a block of its old site.
Plans call for the newspaper to occupy most of the first floor of a new office building at 120 S. George St. As part of a $7 million redevelopment, six buildings are being demolished, except for their facades, which will serve as the face of the new building to rise behind them.
A bank, the York Federal Savings & Loan Association, whose offices are across the street, will occupy the second and third floors of the building, which is being built by an affiliate, Y-F Service Corp.
The project is due for a state grant of $1.4 million to pay for demolition, restoration of facades and construction of parking spaces. Meanwhile, the Daily Record plans to sell its suburban building to an industrial company.
"York has incredible potential but the signs of urban decline are evident," said Daily Record editor and publisher Dennis Hetzel. "We're excited to be part of the solution. The alternative, which is for everyone to throw up their hands while the city deteriorates, should be too awful to contemplate."
The morning Daily Record, with weekday circulation around 42,000, is owned by Buckner News Alliance of Seattle. It entered a joint operating agreement as minority partner to the afternoon York Dispatch, part of William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, in 1990.
The Dispatch remains downtown, about three blocks up the street from the Daily Record's new home.
The joint agency that publishes and produces both papers remains a couple of miles out of town in West Manchester Township.