Paul Bass Photo
The surviving reporters at the New Haven Register have learned that their newsroom probably won’t move downtown, after all.
The daily newspaper’s parent company, Digital First Media, had been negotiating with the owners of the block-long 900 Chapel St. former mall building across from the Green to move the newsroom to the 10,000-square foot space (pictured). The site, sandwiched between Dee Asian Kitchen and the Omni Hotel, was formerly occupied by the Bottega clothing store. The move had been anticipated to take place this August. The company’s non-editorial employees were to move to offices at a separate location.
Digital First execs originally said they planned to move the newsroom downtown as part of their successful campaign to persuade the city to grant them zoning relief in order to sell their largely empty 220,000 square-foot headquarters on Sargent Drive on Long Wharf. The city granted the relief in December, and the company struck a deal to sell the building to Jordan’s Furniture.
The paper is not under any legal obligation to relocate downtown.
The company has since changed its mind about splitting the workforce (an estimated 150 – 170 employees) in two locations. It is now looking for a single location, according to several people familiar with the discussions. It is concerned about the egress and cost of downtown parking. It has made visits to, among other sites, an industrial park on Gando Drive right on the border of the North Haven-New Haven line. But it hasn’t signed a lease there or anywhere else.
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said the Harp administration has been in continual conversations with company officials. He declined to offer details of those discussions.
“We have talked to them every day this week. I’m working to try to keep the New Haven Register part of downtown New Haven,” Nemerson said. “We’re well aware that the journalism industry is under tremendous pressure. We’re trying to balance what we’d like to have versus what’s possible.”