L-A Times’ Downtown Printing Facility To Shut Down

The L-A Times will leave its downtown Los Angeles printing facility in 2024, ending an era of newspaper production at a sprawling plant that was sold off by the paper’s former owner.

Print operations will continue at the Olympic Boulevard plant for the next year and a half, said Chris Argentieri, The Times’ president and chief operating officer, before The Times will begin working with the Southern California News Group to print its newspapers.

“Despite the difficult news, we’re providing this advance notice to help make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved,” Argentieri said. “We hope that manufacturing employees will continue on with us for as long as they can and will work closely with them on the transition process.”

About 170 employees work at the Olympic plant, said Hillary Manning, a Times spokesperson.

Times management did not provide further information on the future status of print production employees.

The Times’ lease at the Olympic plant expires at the end of 2023, according to real estate data provider CoStar.

“We have had a long-term lease in place, but multiple factors prevent us from continuing to print at [Olympic], including a dramatically changed real estate market, declining volume of printing and the landlord’s intention to redevelop the property,” Argentieri said. “The pandemic accelerated these trends.”

The plant, built by The Times in the late 1980s to replace obsolete printing operations at its former downtown headquarters, was kept by former Times owner Tribune Co. after the company’s emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012.

The newspaper became a tenant at the plant in 2014 after The Times was spun off as part of Tribune Publishing.