R.B. Murray Co. is marketing the longtime home of ViaTech Publishing Solutions Inc.'s Springfield office, which began wrapping up operations in the Queen City last year.
The roughly 103,000-square-foot building, 424 N. Cedarbrook Ave., is
available for lease at $3.50 per square foot or for sale at around $3.5 million, said Dave Murray of R.B. Murray Co.
Bay Shore, N.Y.-based ViaTech Vice President of Marketing Julie Carlson Sladcik said the company began closing its Springfield operation in July, about a month after the company purchased Etheridge Printing Co. in Dallas.
That purchase, along with an increasing focus on digital distribution and electronic formats such as PDFs, triggered the shutdown in Springfield, Sladcik said.
"We finally reached a point where that location, it just was not serving all parts of our business," she said. "That really is our business model, to have all parts of the business represented in all of our locations.
"We've survived many different phases within the publishing industry and this next phase really is toward technology and content delivery. That was not represented as strongly in Springfield as it is represented today in Dallas."
ViaTech, which operated in Springfield since 1996, has transitioned some of the roughly 100-120 employees who had worked in the Queen City to Dallas and other ViaTech locations. Other employees were let go via layoffs, retirement and attrition. Sladcik said a handful of accounting and logistics employees continue to work in the Springfield building for the near term. She noted there is no firm date on when the building would be empty.
"The businesses that were run out of Springfield have been transitioned to other areas of ViaTech," Sladcik said, pointing to such work as the production of binders and index tabs.
ViaTech owns the building, and it should be ready for occupancy by September, Murray said.
ViaTech entered the market in the 1990s with the purchase of McBee Looseleaf Binders at the corner of Cedarbrook and Chestnut Expressway, according to
Springfield Business Journal archives.[[In-content Ad]]
