After what promises to be a laborious weekend moving boxes and desks, reconnecting computers and telephones, the Nevada Appeal will open for business in a new 90,000-square-foot office and printing warehouse at 580 Mallory Way on Monday morning.
Tahoe-Carson Area Newspapers, parent company of the Nevada Appeal, bought the building, located one block east of Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, late last year.
Workers and management have spent several months installing a new press, and reworking the layout to accommodate the paper's staff. The two-story, digitally controlled press has been at work printing six local newspapers since Feb. 22.
"The new building allows this business to move forward," said Nevada Appeal Publisher Peter Starren, who also serves as general manager of Tahoe-Carson Area Newspapers. "We have reached a point where we need to grow, and we couldn't do that in the building on Bath Street."
The group, owned by Reno-based Swift Newspapers, also publishes the Minden-Gardnerville Record-Courier, Tahoe Daily Tribune in South Lake Tahoe, North Lake Tahoe Bonanza in Incline Village, Tahoe World in Tahoe City, and Truckee's Sierra Sun. The company also produces specialty publications and operates the Tahoe.com and Reno.com Web sites.
The Mallory Way building was formerly occupied by Automotive Specialty Accessory Parts Inc. It will replace the newspaper's current 23,000 square-foot office and printing facility at 200 Bath Street.
The Nevada Appeal plans to lease 25,000 square feet of warehouse space, as well as 15,000 square feet of professional offices, in the Mallory Way building.
At the Bath Street location, installation of the new press with its two 20-foot towers was impossible. The company's former manually operated Goss unit press dates to the 1970s, and was pushed to its limits to make daily runs.
The company expects the new press to produce higher quality pages twice as fast, with less waste.
For the expanded office space, company executives envision centralized production operations for all six newspapers. Most of the newspapers' business and classified ad operations already operate in Carson City.
At 136 years old, the Nevada Appeal is Nevada's oldest continually operating daily newspaper.