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We’ve known plans were in the works for the Dallas Morning News to pull up stakes and move from the building at the corner of Young and Houston streets where it’s been headquartered since 1949.
What we didn’t know is that the paper would produce such a cheese-tastic video in announcing today that their new home will be the long-ago Dallas Public Library at Commerce and Harwood streets. The building, now being called “the Statler Library,” adjoins the former Statler Hilton hotel, which is being redeveloped by Centurion American.
They hope to begin settling into their new office in the second quarter of next year, and they’re already giving themselves credit for bolstering “a $221 million redevelopment, backed in part by city tax money, of two historic downtown buildings.”
The paper will be downsizing from about 325,000 square feet of space to about 100,000 square feet, though much of their current building was originally meant to house presses and typesetting machines that are no longer needed in an age of digital production. Yet it’s still not clear whether they’ll have enough desks for their entire staff, as currently sized, in the new place or not.
They’re also planning on having an “open office” concept in their new setup, “which will make cooperation within the newsroom and with other departments much easier,” according to News CEO Jim Moroney. (Having worked in an open-office setting for about seven years now, I would encourage executives to better consider the cost-benefit analysis of a situation in which everyone in a newsroom unavoidably listens in on everyone else’s conversations.)
Moroney acknowledges that cost-cutting, like that associated with a move, is typical when a company is looking to sell itself, but he also insists the move has nothing whatsoever to do with reports of a possible purchase of the DMN by Gannett.
They don’t know yet what will become of their George Dahl-designed current HQ or the massive “Rock of Truth” inscription on its front.
Now, to what I really want to know. How many takes did they need to get Robert Wilonsky, Leslie Brenner, and Gromer Jeffers to walk out onto the loading dock, and turn to the camera perfectly in sync to announce “It’s time”?
