Is The Monitor Moving Its Print Operation Out Of Concord?

CONCORD, NH — The parent company of the Concord Monitor is reportedly considering moving its printing infrastructure out of the city, possibly selling its holdings, and has also asked the assessing department for a tax abatement. Specific information about the move and when it will be implemented have not been finalized by Newspapers of New England, the parent company of the Monitor, which owns three newspapers in the Granite State and a number of papers in western Massachusetts. However, during the past decade, as commercial printing production as well as display advertising have waned, a number of companies around the region have had to make similar decisions to either sell – or get creative – with holdings and operations to preserve their businesses.

Sources have stated that the plan involves moving print operations to West Lebanon – where the company publishes the Valley News – while news and sales staff would work remotely. The Monitor’s building off Sewalls Falls Road would then be put up for sale.

The Monitor has also requested a nearly $1.2 million tax abatement from the city’s assessing department which would lower its property tax liability by about $41,000.

Aaron Julien, president and CEO, Newspapers of New England, did not return phone calls requesting comment about the plan, which began surfacing as a rumor late last year.

1 Monitor Drive, the newspaper’s current facility, was constructed in the late 1980s, after the company decided it needed more space and moved out of its North State Street property – at the intersection of Blake Street – in the building currently owned by Riverbend Community Mental Health. The property is currently assessed at nearly $4.8 million, has 36,000 square feet of commercial space, and nearly 104-acres of land, according to assessing information online.

Using current assessment rates – $33.92 in Penacook – it is estimated that the company is paying about $163,000 annually to the city in property taxes. The West Lebanon facility – a little less than 4.2-acres on Interchange Drive – is assessed at a little more than $2.15 million and taxed at a rate of $29.08, or about $63,000 annually, according to information online.

The move and sale of the building would easily save enough money annually to pay for at least four reporters – not including other potential savings like utility costs or the money derived from a sale of the building.

Since the company is privately held, it is unknown exactly how many employees remain in the Concord facility.

In 2006, as part of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Class that was learning about the paper’s business operations, then-Executive Editor Mike Pride noted that there were 13 reporters working on news, about 46 editorial employees and 120 employees altogether working in Concord. A tour of the printing facility led the then-publisher to give the impression that the commercial printing business was sustaining the company’s news operation (he later clarified the remarks and stated that the commercial printing business was enhancing the news operation).

According to a number of sources, including former employees, the company has sporadically sustained cuts or left positions vacant since 2012, including editorial, page layout, and photography positions.

A visit last year to the building revealed entire floors that seemed to be completely vacant.

Print Newspapers Get Creative

Journalism professor and media critic Dan Kennedy, author of the new book, “The Return Of The Moguls: How Jeff Bezos and John Henry Are Remaking Newspapers for the Twenty-First Century,” said that dynamic changes – and diversification of the business, too – have become the norm with newspapers and news outlets.

“Printing is a very expensive industrial process from the old days,” he said. “I think that for quite a while, the demand for printing presses has dropped dramatically. So, you either make it a big regional facility, publishing a number of publications, or, you go the other way; you’re one of the newspapers that outsources its printing.”

It is not an anomaly, either, Kennedy noted, for companies to inform their employees that they would no longer have an office to go to. He said that Digital First Media – which is considered the fourth-largest newspaper company and recently purchased the Boston Herald at auction for $12 million – informed its Merrimack Valley employees last month that it would be vacating its space in Downtown Fitchburg, MA, and moving to a virtual newsroom setup. Staffers there include employees for two daily newspapers – The Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg and The Lowell Sun – as well as two weekly newspapers and sales staff.

Companies like the Boston Globe, Kennedy added, still control its own assets, to some extent, but have also consolidated operations. Late last year, the Globe sold its Morrissey Boulevard facility for $81 million – about $11 million more than Henry paid for the Globe and its holdings in 2013. The sale, Kennedy said, not only helped Henry come close to breaking even on his initial investment – $20.3 million was recently spent to purchase a printing plant in Taunton, MA – but it is expected to save the Globe about $30 million annually in operating costs, according to his research.

Last fall, the New Hampshire Union Leader sold its east Manchester building for $3.8 million to an investor and then, agreed to lease space from the new owner, according to a report in InDepthNH. Publisher Joe McQuaid, in a statement published in the newspaper about two weeks after InDepthNH broke the story, called the sale bittersweet and acknowledged that there would be staff reductions. But, he added that “as we pivot to meet new media challenges, we must right-size to fit our business.”

The Monitor has been one of the go-to place for out-sourced print publications for many years, publishing books, products for Concord Hospital and the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce, as well as a number of newspapers, including titles in Massachusetts. However, companies working as a collective in southern New Hampshire have created more competition for those that remain in business.

In mid-2013, the Union Leader stopped publishing its own newspaper and instead, joined forces with the Seacoast Media Group in an effort to help that company expand its printing operation, according to press reports at the time. The company – with printing plants in Dover and Portsmouth – not only could publish the UL but also many other publications, with more aggressive pricing. Four years ago, the company had 170 printing clients, including daily and weekly newspapers around the region, and appears to have cut into the Monitor’s business, some say.

Some press employees at the UL were absorbed by SMG but another 33 lost their jobs.

Effect On Penacook

1 Monitor Drive is in Ward 1, the Penacook district. However, Ward 2 City Councilor Allan Herschlag – and others who pay Penacook property taxes – have raised concerns about the higher bills they pay as compared to the rest of the city, due mostly to the costs of the Merrimack Valley School District. But the higher rate is also partially due to the village having less retail and industrial properties – about 25 percent versus 40 percent for the rest of the city. This means that Penacook has a heavier reliance on homeowners.

Abatement requests by the Monitor and other companies like Wheelabrator – which was once assessed at nearly $80 million, is now assessed at $35 million, and has also requested another reduction – as well as Beede and Rivco, which have also requested breaks, in addition to new, low-income housing catering to families which will increase the cost of an already expensive school system, could be a perfect storm of property tax pain for Penacook.

“Here’s why this matters,” Herschlag stated in an email. “Both the total value of assessments and the percentage of commercial versus residential works against those in the MVSD. In Penacook, it doesn’t take nearly the change in value of commercial properties to have a significant impact on residential property owners school portion of their tax rates.”

Should the abatements for Penacook properties be approved, “it means that an even greater portion of the funding needed to pay for the MVSD will continue to be shifted to residential property owners,” he added.

Future Development

The future, however, could possibly provide some economic growth in the area although not enough to offset the losses of the tax abatement requests or closed businesses. But, then again, with some investments by the city or state, there could be development opportunities on the Monitor’s property and others in the area.

All of the 104-acres of land owned by Newspapers of New England is zoned as light industrial and abuts a rail line. The land is split up into two parcels – the 1 Monitor Drive facility, about 88-acres off Sewalls Falls Road, and another 16-acre parcel, which has a street address of Hannah Dustin Drive, and abuts the Concord Regional Solid Waste Facility. While Hayward Brook runs through the lower part of the properties, creating some wetlands issues, and there is ledge along the Merrimack River, most of the area appears developable.

Earlier this year, David and Laurie Rauseo, who own Interchange Development LLC, requested to have nearly 30-acres of their land just north of the Monitor parcels to be rezoned into a Gateway Performance District. There is a Planning Board hearing about the proposal set for March 21. If approved, the Rauseos hope to have mixed use at the site including warehouse, retail, office/medical space, and a supermarket, something that has been requested by community members for many years.

The change – and expansion – will require traffic modifications to be constructed at the intersection of Whitney Road and Route 4, just off Exit 17 on I-93. But, if approved – and successful – it might pave the way for new development on some of the property along the river between the Monitor building and Wheelabrator.

Laurie Rauseo said that she and her husband had been in touch with Julien in the past about extending Whitney Road to Sewalls Falls Road and he was agreeable to the idea. The Rauseos also heard a rumor that the Monitor property was for sale and reached out to Julien recently but had not heard back.

Laurie Rauseo said that if the property were to be sold, she would hope that the new owners would follow through on the previous commitment to allow Whitney Road to be extended in order to increase the tax base in Penacook. Or, she added, she hoped the city would “act fast,” before the property was sold, in order to ensure an extended Whitney Road could be built.

“(Extending the road) is obviously to their benefit, whoever buys it,” she said. “Who knows what a new owner would want to do … you don’t know.”

The Rauseos also have information about an extension in their proposal before the Planning Board, she added.

Printing Since 1864

While news will occur and be published online or broadcast, if the company moves forward with the plan, it will be the end of an era in the city. The physical print edition of the Monitor, according to information online, has been published daily, in some form, in Concord, since 1864. Its masthead, at the time, was the Concord Monitor and New Hampshire Patriot.

The current family that owns the company has owned the newspaper since the 1960s when William Dwight, the publish of the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram in western Massachusetts, purchased the newspaper from James Langley, who bought the Monitor and Patriot and merged them in the 1920s. Dwight’s son-in-law, George Wilson, took over the company in the 1970s but retired in 2005. Julien, another son-in-law of Wilson’s, took over the company in 2009.

The company also owns the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in Peterborough as well as The Recorder of Greenfield, The Summit of Easthampton, the Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, the Amherst Bulletin, and Valley Advocate of East Hampton – all located in western-central Massachusetts and along the I-91 corridor, a straight shot from West Lebanon.

In December 2017, Newspapers of New England purchased the Athol Daily News, a six-day a week newspaper owned by a Massachusetts family for the last 77 years, for an undisclosed amount of money.

Image via Tony Schinella, Patch staff, and screenshots from Google maps and the city of Concord’s online assessing map.

Editor's Note: 1 Monitor Drive is located in Ward 1, not Ward 2 as previously reported.