MaineToday Media sells longtime South Portland location
PHOTO CREDIT / PETER VAN ALLEN
One City Center in downtown Portland. Following the sale and leaseback of its South Portland printing plant, MaineToday Media plans to move operations out of the Portland location to South Portland.
MaineToday Media, the owner and publisher of The Portland Press Herald, Maine Sunday Telegram, Kennebec Journal, Waterville Sentinel and The Coastal Journal, has sold its printing plant in South Portland. It plans to continue operating out of the location through a leaseback agreement with the buyer.
J.B. Brown & Co., a Portland-based property management firm, purchased both the 170,000-square-foot plant and the surrounding 21 acres for $4.9 million, according to The Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News.
According to a recent South Portland assessment, the 21-acre plot was valued at $2.2 million while the building itself was valued at $9.9 million. The original cost for construction of the printing facility in 1989 was $40 million.
Ownership of the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram, who together form the largest circulation newspaper in the state, has changed hands numerous times since the construction of the South Portland facility.
In 1998 the newspaper group was purchased by a subsidiary of The Seattle Times Co., which published the papers until 2009, when a group of investors led by Pennsylvania-based publisher Richard Connor purchased the group. Connor sold a controlling stake in the company to business investor Donald Sussman in 2012. During his time as the majority share owner, Sussman invested more than $13 million in the publications and increased its labor force following financial hardships and cuts to the workforce under its previous ownership.
In June 2015, Sussman sold the newspaper company to Reade Brower, the publisher of a number of papers in the midcoast Maine region, including The Courier-Gazette and The Camden Herald.
MaineToday Media also announced it plans to move the majority of its remaining staff, including reporters and editors, to the South Portland location once a sublessee is found for its One City Center location in Portland. The publishing company had been operating out of that location since 2009.
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