The San Mateo County Times building at 1080 S Amphlett Blvd., which has an orange sign that can be seen from Highway 101 near the Third Avenue interchange, will soon be for sale, employees of the paper have been told. MediaNews Group will begin testing the printing of the Times at its Hayward plant at 3317 Arden Road, 15 miles across the Bay. If the tests are successful, the printing will move to Hayward in December. After that, management plans to move the news and sales offices to a Peninsula location that has yet to be identified. At that point, the Times building will be put up for sale.
The news follows another round of layoffs at the San Mateo County Times and other MediaNews properties in the Bay Area. The number of layoffs wasn’t disclosed, but more than 20 graphics jobs at the Contra Costa Times are being outsourced to India.
As the PPC reported Nov. 4, the MediaNews-owned Oakland Tribune is leaving the Tribune Tower in downtown Oakland. The Tribune’s news, sales, IT and internet staffers are moving to the Airport Corporate Center on Oakport Drive on I-880 across from the Oakland Collesum. MediaNews will lease about 15,000 square feet there compared to the 65,000 square feet it now has in the Tower. MediaNews is also setting up a “shared services” office in San Ramon to handle business functions for its papers.