Scripps Newspapers
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Square Footage: 165,000
Completion: 2002

As a Senior Architect of Austin AECOM, Todd Heirls was responsible for Project Management and Project Architecture. This project encompassed planning, programming, design and construction administration for a 165,000 square foot office, production, and distribution center facility. The scope of the project relocated the downtown office and production facility to near downtown brownfield site earmarked by the City of Knoxville as a redevelopment zone. The selected site offered high visibility from the intersection of two major highways serving the Knoxville metropolitan area while, the operation represented the state of the art in automation. This automation limited the need to handle the product from the clamp truck to the loading of pallets on the truck. The production component contained warehousing, production, packaging and distribution to a DC network. The Office component contained all editorial and business departments. The total scope also included one attached on site distribution center.

Todd Heirls worked closely with the owners planning team and the equipment vendor’s engineers to coordinate and integrate the selected production and packaging equipment into the facility. The facility incorporated two MAN Roland regioman double wide presses, GMA FlexiRoll buffer system, SLS-2000 inserters, and Fontana palletizes. The roll handling was accomplished through MAN Roland’s automated roll staging, retrieving and loading equipment.

Reference: Mark Beaty, Production Director
Ted Milligan, Production Director (retired)
Frank Wolf, E.W. Scripps Director of Operations