While looking at the Sun-Times Media Group's annual report to shareholders I remembered that the company plans to move all its printing operations into the Ashland Avenue plant. Here's the quote: “the Company currently produces most of its suburban newspapers at a 100,000 square foot owned plant, in Plainfield, Illinois (which is held for sale at December 31, 2008) and a 65,000 square foot leased building in Northfield, Illinois. The Company closed its older, less productive facility on South Harlem Avenue in 2006, in 2007 closed its Gary, Indiana facility and announced it will consolidate its three printing operations by closing and offering for sale its production facility in Plainfield, Illinois in 2009 and intends to consolidate several other facilities.” Now you have to sort of make a jump and an assumption here. This is another part of the same section: “the Company owns a 320,000 square foot, state of the art printing facility in Chicago, Illinois that houses the production for the Chicago Sun-Times.”

Personally, I don't think this planned move is any secret. In fact here is a Chicago Tribune report on the closure. It seems as though people have been discussing it for most of the decade. However, that plant on Ashland has had continuing production problems since it opened.

Just for fun, and because I'm obviously a numbers wonk, I looked at what the management proposes to do at this plant. Answer: increase production three days a week by an average of about 68 percent, on two days a week by about 94 percent and similar increases on weekends. Huh? Since when has this plant started to live up to its billing?