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I fell in love with the stately charm of the Cedar County News building the first time I set eyes on it back in February 1992.
What wasn’t there to like about this brown brick and white one-and-a-half story building anchoring the corner of Hartington’s two busiest downtown streets?
Oh, the plans we had for this grand old place.
We dreamed and schemed of restoring it to its former glory with its tall ceilings and marble floors.
The first thing we did in that restoration process was to turn our old darkroom into a 1920s era office.
Removing the stain-covered flooring, getting the walls back to their original look, removing the fake tile ceiling and restoring the thick plaster molding that topped the 20-foot ceiling took eight months and countless dollars to accomplish, but it was so worth it.
Today, when people first walk into our building and start looking around, that old dark room, now Peggy’s office, is the first thing I show them.
We had planned to do the same thing in my office and in the front reception area, too. A lack of time and money always seemed to get in the way, though.
A changing communication landscape is also getting in the way of our building revitalization plans.
When newspapers started springing up around the country in the 1800s, it used to be they all had one or two presses in the office. One to print their newspaper on, and at least one to print the envelopes, stationary, business cards, prayer cards, sale posters, billing forms and receipts their customers needed.
In today’s digital world, very few of those things are required now. So, the storage room we have for paper and the huge paper cutter, and equally large paper scorer we have just don’t get used much. We also replaced our mechanical presses years ago with a large digital press. It prints more, faster and with much better quality.
Production of the newspaper itself was also different when we first arrived in Hartington. Two different laser printers were used to print out 8.5x11 sheets that were then cut down to size, waxed and placed on large layout sheets. Those sheets, which measured about 14x22 inches in size, were then placed side by side on a large slanted table for page layout and proofing. While we still have that huge layout table, we really don’t need it anymore. Those large layout sheets got tossed about a quarter century ago.
These days we paginate all of our pages and print them out onto 11x17 sheets — a method that takes up a lot less space. Our staff in the 1990s was also quite a bit bigger. We had 22 employees across five offices in 2000.
Technological improvements and the changing landscape of our business allows us to do the same work with just eight employees today.
We literally filled the building from the top of the storage area we built to the dark recesses of the basement. Needless to say though, we just don’t need all that space anymore.
So, I’ve come to a sad conclusion. It’s time to sell this beautiful old building and move into a smaller space so someone else can complete the face lift we started three decades ago.
I’m incredibly sad we weren’t able to complete our dream of restoring this historic gem, but I’m hopeful we can find someone who’d like to finish the job for us and bring this beauty back to its old glory.
