NEW ORLEANS – A group of local businessmen, including developer Joseph Jaeger Jr. and float builder Barry Kern, has purchased the former Times-Picayune building along Interstate 10.
The New Orleans Advocate first reported news of the $3.5 million deal, which closed Sept. 2. The new owner is 3800 Howard Investors LLC.
A representative for Jaeger said his group has “no immediate plans” for the property, The Advocate reported.
The sale included everything except the furniture and presses. In recent weeks a salvage company sold off all furnishings in the building and tore out the presses, blocks-long machines that were installed in the late ’80s.
The plant opened in 1968 to house The Times-Picayune and States-Item. The Howard Avenue plant, with a modern look and large working spaces, opened to much fanfare and was a far cry from the papers’ former home in a cramped, antiquated brick building on Lafayette Square in the Central Business District.
Pictures from that time show long lines of visitors who showed up to tour the facility.
The Picayune called the plant home until 2012, when its owners, New York-based Advance Publications, announced plans to cut daily publication and hundreds of jobs in favor of digital publishing.
The news and advertising departments left for new offices on the top of One Canal Place in 2013.
One of the last uses for the Howard Avenue plant was printing, which ended locally early this year. The Picayune is now printed in Mobile on the presses of the Press-Register, a sister paper.
In recent weeks, workers covered The Times-Picayune name on the building’s clock tower, and this week storm shutters were rolled down on some windows.
