NEW HAVEN -- Shortly after Business New Haven reported on plans by the New Haven Register to restructure and relocate its news-gathering operation, the Register made its own announcement about site, functional and workforce changes.

In addition to establishing a downtown “open newsroom,” those changes include a 105-worker layoff and outsourcing its printing needs to the Hartford Courant, the Register stated in a Jan. 11 story.

“The move to contract printing services is a trend that has already been embraced by other daily newspapers in Connecticut,” the story noted. It gave among several examples newspapers such as the New London Day, which is printed in Rhode Island, and The New Britain Herald, printed in Massachusetts, as well as other Connecticut periodicals that outsource within the state.

The Register article said its new printing arrangement will commence in February.

While as yet no downtown New Haven site has been secured to house the newspaper’s open newsroom, CBRE has been selected to represent the Register as it seeks to sell its current 200,000-square-foot building, located at 40 Sargent Dr. The Register story also stated that the state Department of Labor has been notified of the newspaper’s plans to halt printing services.

Most of the employees losing their jobs will consist of full-time and part-time pressroom and mail room workers, according to the story.

The January issue of Business New Haven reported on the Register’s intention to establish an open newsroom, inviting the public to participate in the process of relaying news and information within a relaxed, café-style atmosphere. The idea is to improve city coverage by allowing local citizens to have direct access to journalists working on the day’s stories, and community input regarding the content of those stories.

The open newsroom concept has been touted as the future of journalism by the Journal Register Company, parent company of the New Haven Register. Other Journal Register Company newspapers include the The Register Citizen in Torrington, which launched a Newsroom Café a little over a year ago.

The city has assessed the Register property at $7,031, 990. That includes 13.34 acres of land, valued at $2,105,250; the core structure, assessed at $4,625,670; extra building features (such as passenger and freight elevators, sprinklers, etc.), $209,930; and outbuilding elements (including paving and asphalt, and pump house), $91,140.

How soon the property might be bought depends on a number of factors, says real estate expert Robert H. Motley. They include intention – if the buyer wants to utilize the property or prefers to use it as an investment opportunity; market value; and inherent worth to the buyer.

“The most valued real estate is retail space, then office use, then industrial,” says Motley, director at Cushman and Wakefield. He noted that depending on use, a building can be priced at, say, $28 per square foot on the high end (retail) to $6 per square foot on the low end (industrial).

Motley should know. He handled the sale of the former Pirelli property, where IKEA is now located. That and other surrounding properties, such as Gateway Community College, are additional factors a buyer contemplating purchase of the Register building would consider, Motley says.

“What are the other competing buildings in the marketplace? Gateway Community College will be vacant [soon],” he notes. “Will that be a good thing or a bad thing for the Register?”

Additional factors for a potential buyer include area population count, visibility, and traffic, he says.

Zoning regulations, and whether they might change – the Register building currently is used for both office and industrial purposes – also could have an impact.

“You have to consider [possible] future zone changes as well as reconfiguration of the highway,” says Motley. He adds that possible brownfield issues also must be considered. “Is there ground water contamination below the concrete slab?” he asks.

In this economy, when and to whom the Register building might be sold could depend on whether the list price is considered fair market value.

“It’s rare nowadays for somebody to overpay given the tough economic headwinds,” says Motley. He sees the Register site in particular as “a good piece of real estate,” he says. “It’s an intriguing site [on which] to do a lot of things -- but there are a lot of strong headwinds.”