Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Here’s what I’m getting about the sale of the Asheville Citizen-Times printing plant facility on Sardis Road, which I blogged earlier.
The site was sold to an injection molding company that plans to produce medical equipment. They’ll be looking to build a clean room, which sounds like that could mean a significant investment in a building, not to mention the prospect of new manufacturing jobs.
It’s unclear what the company will produce. As I stated earlier, I have yet to confirm the property transfer. If anyone has more detail, let me know.
The Citizen-Times closed the printing press back in January and moved the giant press out this summer. I’m told it mostly went to scrap – that’s a correction on my part. I thought that most of it went into storage in Greenville, S.C.
I’m curious to know if the new owner will have to do any clean-up on the property. I believe the Sardis site has been used as printing plant for the newspaper since the 1980s. That’s a lot of ink that’s been delivered, used, and probably sometimes spilled on the site. How was old ink or bad ink ever disposed of?
Since the printing press’ closure, the location has still been used as a loading dock for all the newspaper carriers. The newspapers are printed in Greenville, then trucked up to the dock at Sardis, where they’re distributed to the carriers, who deliver the newspapers to racks and homes.
I’m told the Citizen-Times has to stop using that location by Nov. 1. So where is the new dock/distribution location? I’m unclear of the location of the new distribution center.
That’s the lates.
Sunday mornings may be tough on traffic. On a fairly isolated road. Sporadically between 2 and 4 am. With some planning ahead, there shouldn’t be much issue after a couple Sundays. Weekdays should be fine.
There should not be any environmental issues at the plant. There was an outside storage tank, but that was removed back in the multimedia days. It was only in use for a couple of years. The area was monitored for years after the removal by a third party. You can say a lot about the stupid things Gannett has done over the years (and you would be right most of the time) but they were serious about environmental complaince, not to mention having a serious commitment to CYA with regard to environmental laws.
I dont post much on here but the depth of sillyness about the move is a bit much.
Its just a move to a new building.
The old building , while printing and doing full on production, needed conveyor belts. Only reason we still kinda use them is the buildings layout.
We haven’t been using the dock doors (only 3 of 4 worked) for anything much, for 10 months, other than about 4 trucks. Not going to have a major impact on anyone. Just different. Just been using a nice covered area to work from outside….that any carrier that comes there would know.
For the new buildings, conveyor belts are simply not appropriate.
Sunday mornings may be tough on traffic. On a fairly isolated road. Sporadically between 2 and 4 am. With some planning ahead, there shouldn’t be much issue after a couple Sundays. Weekdays should be fine.
Everyone is still going to get their paper on time with little fuss.
DownandOut: What storage take are you talking about? There is no outside tanks at the old facility… and definitely none now.
As for the environmental concerns not to much of a problem with ink. There was a solvent storage tank located in the back side of the property if there’s any contamination it could be in that area.
I spoke with an AC-T carrier this morning and learned that they’ll be distributing out of a loading dock on Pond Rd., off Brevard Rd near I-40. The facility only has two loading spots and no conveyor belts. There were often long waiting periods at the old loading dock which had something like six or seven bays on the main dock and additional bays around the other side. It’s going to be quite a jam-up at 2 a.m. and even worse on Saturdays around midnight– which is when the Sunday paper starts loading.
Yeah you’re right "no need". I’m sure it only takes about 10 delivery people to move 40,000 papers around. There’s lots of room with that tiny parking lot downtown. Thanks for your expertise!
Before the CT printing plant was moved to Sardis Road they printed at the downtown location. There is a loading dock at OHenry. Can’t imagine they would need a new distribution area when they only publish a scant 40,000 papers every day.
Wow, it was just about 2006/2007 or so when they were touting the $4.3 million upgrade to the printing press equipment. If that went to scrap, that’s a pretty expensive pile of metal.