The Austin Company designed and built The Columbus Dispatch’s plant located on the west side of Columbus. The plant answered the newspaper’s needs for more color, later production deadlines and earlier deliveries. The facility was designed to readily accommodate growth and has served the newspaper well for more than a decade.

The 400,000 SF building, located on a 62-acre site, houses The Dispatch’s newsprint warehouse, mailroom, preprint storage and four 10-unit TKS-M72 presses, which are capable of producing 70,000 newspapers per hour. Two quiet rooms located within the facility house the computer monitors that control the presses.

The building exterior is clad in precast concrete, metal panels, glass and aluminum, and supported on a structural steel frame. A detached building constructed of the same materials houses offices for the circulation and production departments.

The facility replaced The Dispatch’s downtown production plant also built by The Austin Company in 1963.