Will The Herald sell its building, too?

The news: The Herald's printing operations are being closed and moved by its parent, the Journal Register Co., to New Haven. The JRC owns the New Haven Register. The JRC, in its press release announcing this change, said The Herald will gain from improved printing facilities in New Haven. The company said it expects to save about $500,000. [Wikipedia background on the JRC and JRC financials on Google]

The speculation: Printing operations account for a big part of the The Herald's downtown building. Once the JRC moves its printing equipment the company may be tempted to sell the building and relocate advertising and news offices to a smaller space. The Herald may only need square footage half the size of what it now owns. But the JRC could reuse that space. The Herald is centrally located to other JRC properties, including the Bristol Press and Middletown Press, which also makes it an ideal consolidation site.

A little history: The Herald's printing operations were first rate for their day. By the late 1970s, The Herald had moved to electronic publishing. It had excess printing capacity as well. When it was not printing The Herald, its presses serviced other accounts. One of The Herald's biggest outside jobs was printing New York's Village Voice.