Over the last five years, Austin AECOM provided a variety of professional planning, design and engineering services to modernize the newspaper’s production operations.
The most recent project is a new 60,000-sq-ft packaging and distribution facility designed around a Schur collating, inserting and palletizing system. This will be the first total packaging system provided by Copenhagen based Schur in the US.
Initially, Austin AECOM was asked to assist the newspaper in developing strategies to modernize their aging production operations. This strategic planning process involved product and operational planning sessions in which the newspaper clearly articulated its objectives for product improvements in response to market demands.
Equipment and facility forecasts were then used to compare various facility options to implement the plans, including a Greenfield facility on a hypothetical site in the Champaign area.
Austin AECOM assisted the owner in selecting an appropriate site in the Apollo industrial park north of Champaign. A 16-acre parcel was selected as providing the optimum development potential for the newspaper’s long term plans. The parcel selected can provide rail service and can support not only the newspaper but also commercial and broadcast businesses that are currently owned by the newspaper.
Austin AECOM prepared a master plan for the property and an order-of-magnitude cost estimate for the entire production operations to be located at this site.
The News-Gazette prints and distributes 38,000 daily and 40,000 Sunday newspapers in Champaign and Urbana, Illinois. In addition, the newspaper prints The Daily Illini, the campus newspaper for The University of Illinois, as well as several weekly publications for the regional market. |
