Daily Progress building will soon go up for sale

Media General Inc. plans to place the building and property on West Rio Road that now serve as base for The Daily Progress newspaper on the market for sale within the next couple of weeks.
The Richmond-based owner of newspapers, television stations and Web-based businesses said a possible sale of the Progress building is part of a larger review of company-owned facilities and assets.
The Progress building, a former hardware store located at the corner of West Rio Road and Berkmar Drive in Albemarle County, and its land have a combined assessed value of about $4 million, according to county records.
Daily Progress Publisher Lawrence McConnell said the newspaper looks forward to finding an appropriate space for the news, advertising, circulation and business functions of the paper, which could result in staying in the current facility. The Progress has been in the Rio Road building since moving there from Market Street in downtown Charlottesville in 1983.
The sale of the building became more of an option after Media General decided to shut down the press on Rio Road and shift printing of The Daily Progress to a company plant in Hanover County and printing of the Waynesboro News Virginian to the company’s Lynchburg newspaper plant. Each had been printed in Charlottesville until July.
“The Daily Progress has been publishing since 1892 and continues to flourish as the community’s marketplace for news, advertising, information and ideas,“ McConnell said. “The paper’s business needs changed to prompt a move from downtown to Rio Road in the 1980s, and now we’re in a similar position.“
The newspaper has about 85 full-time employees whose functions now occupy about two-thirds of the building’s space.
Media General has consolidated printing operations as it focuses on operations clustered in geographic areas as a way to operate more efficiently.
The 25-year-old MAN Roland press at the Rio Road building needed an estimated $3 million of refurbishing and updating, and had limited capability to print color news and advertising pages.
As other newspaper company owners, Media General is reviewing its real estate holdings with an eye toward using money made in sales to pay down debt.
The Tribune Co., for example, earlier put the headquarters of both the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune on the market. Buildings housing the newspaper operations of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas and the Philadelphia Inquirer also are for sale.
Media General paid $2.58 million for the property and former hardware store building in 1995, the year the company purchased The Daily Progress from Worrell Enterprises.
The building was constructed in 1974 and includes nearly 30,000 square feet of finished space. It sits on about 4 acres.
Albemarle’s most recent assessment on Jan. 1, 2008, valued the land at $2.5 million and the building at $1.52 million.
Media General and its commercial real estate firm, Grubb & Ellis Co., have not set an asking price on the property.