'The Tennessean' to Sell Long-Time Home, Seek Future 'Newsroom Of The Future'

The Tennessean will sell its long-time home at 1100 Broadway and seek new digs elsewhere in downtown, the newspaper reported Monday.

No price for the 10-acre site that covers a full city block on Broadway above and adjacent to The Gulch, but real-estate experts said it could fetch as much as $200 per square foot, or $87 million, but there's a caveat.

“That’s a lot of money to put down for land to carry on your books. It feels like we’re in a boom because there’s still a lot of construction going on, but there’s definitely less demand now,” Cushman & Wakefield's Fred Kane told the newspaper.

The Tennessean is owned by national media conglomerate Gannett, which has sold several large properties attached to its newspapers recently, including its headquarters in Tysons Corner, Va., and newspaper offices in Indianapolis and Rochester. Laura Hollingsworth, president of The Tennessean, was publisher of the Des Moines Register when that paper sold its long-time home and moved to a more modern space, which, she says, will be the pattern The Tennessean follows, as it looks for more collaborative spaces rather than the manufacturing-era building at 1100 Broadway.

The move could be seen as the latest step in The Tennessean's move to what it called "the newsroom of the future," a scaled-down operation with fewer managers and more nimble reporters in an environment that uses data to make coverage decisions.

There will still be an industrial aspect to the paper's new site, as it is one of the largest printing operations in the Gannett family.

The Tennessean building is between two major re-development projects, which could aid in the sale. The former Lifeway campus is just east of 1100 Broadway and the former Nelson Mazda dealership is just to the west.

Image via Wikimedia user Kaldari