Times-Union Media President Mark Nusbaum said Monday it could be three years before a decision is made and there is “a shovel in the ground” at the company’s 18.8-acre Riverside Avenue riverfront property.
Morris Publishing Group, the parent company of The Florida Times-Union, announced Saturday it was putting its property at 1 Riverside Ave. on the market for possible sale or redevelopment.
The company could consider partnerships to develop the site for mixed-use, including offices, a hotel or multifamily housing, the release said.
Nusbaum said after his keynote address at the JAXUSA Partnership lunch it would take six months or more to gather information.
Executing a sale or redesign would take two to five years, he said, leading to his three-year estimate.
He told reporters after the event he had been thinking about the property’s use since he came to Jacksonville in March 2012. He first “wanted to make sure our house was in order.”
In February 2010, a federal judge cleared the way for Morris Publishing Group to emerge from bankruptcy protection less than a month after it filed for Chapter 11.
Nusbaum told the audience the company has no debt.
“That wasn’t always the case,” he said to the more than 500 people attending the lunch at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront.
He emphasized to reporters the company was solid financially.
While employment and circulation are down, Nusbaum told the JAXUSA attendees that readership is up, topping 1 million people reached on Sundays through the newspaper, the website, social media and new niche products.
Circulation, the historical measure of a newspaper’s readership, is about 70,000 daily and 100,000 on Sunday, he said. The peak Sunday circulation was more than double that.
Employment topped out at about 1,000 in the last decade and now is about 330, he said.
Because of the changing industry, Nusbaum said the company didn’t need all of the space at the Riverside Avenue site, on the Northbank by the Acosta Bridge and over McCoy’s Creek.
The buildings were developed in 1967. Morris bought the newspaper in 1982.
“At the TU, we truly need to right-size our business,” he told JAXUSA.
Duval County property records show the three-story production building at a gross area of almost 223,000 square feet and the connected five-story office building at 55,542 square feet.
There’s also a two-deck parking garage, a small warehouse, a service garage and other small structures, records show.
Morris Publishing Group, based in Augusta, Ga., is working with the CBRE commercial real estate services and investment firm to market the property.
Louis Nutter, senior vice president of investment properties, and Brian Moulder, executive vice president, are the CBRE executives working on the project.
CBRE will soon issue an offering memorandum, Morris Publishing said.
According to a news release, CBRE suggested four possibilities: Selling the site; forming a joint venture to develop the site; relocating the offices and using that part of the site for a hotel or multifamily housing; or relocating the production functions, developing that part of the site and anchoring the news, advertising and other office functions in the existing five-story building with the “Times-Union” signage.
CBRE said the property was attractive for development because of the growth of the Brooklyn area along Riverside Avenue.
The property is across the street from the apartments, stores and restaurants that continue to expand along the corridor.
Duval County property records show a market value and assessed value of almost $14.3 million at 1 Riverside Ave.
The land uses are light industrial; commercial, residential, office; and 6 acres of submerged land. Morris Publishing said the property includes 4 acres of the St. Johns River.
In the Saturday news release, Nusbaum said newspaper-based companies across the country are adapting to the explosion of digital technologies and most of their buildings were designed for industrial typesetting machines.
Those have been replaced by computers, requiring substantially less space.
Digital communication also means that while newsroom and advertising offices can remain in the central city, the presses and distribution facilities could be located along major roadways, he said in the release.
“The Times-Union consumes far too much infrastructure,” he told JAXUSA.
Nusbaum said Monday the Morris leadership’s preferred option is for the organization to remain at 1 Riverside Ave. He also said the company was “very interested in being a development partner,” including a possible sales-leaseback.
Asked how the plans might change as the industry evolves in two to five years, he said the decision “will be aligned with where we’re headed.”
He emphasized that family patriarch and company chairman Billy Morris is committed to Downtown Jacksonville. Because the company is privately held, the Morrises will make the decision, he said.
Morris Publishing owns 11 daily newspapers as well as non-daily newspapers, city magazines and free community publications in the Southeast, Midwest, Southwest and Alaska.
It is concentrated in the Southeast, where it owns the Times-Union, The St. Augustine Record, The Augusta Chronicle, Savannah Morning News and Athens Banner-Herald.
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