The Belleville News-Democrat has found a new home. We’ll be moving this spring.
The BND is moving back to Public Square in Belleville.
The Belleville News-Democrat’s new address will be 23 Public Square, on the second floor of the Mathis, Marifian & Richter building.
Our new home is near the site of the old Belleville News-Democrat building that burned down 121 years ago on Public Square.
It shouldn’t surprise you that we are remaining downtown, where our roots run deep. We looked all over Belleville, both inside the city and along its edges, after we announced the sale of our current building and intention to move. During our search for a new location, we never strayed far from downtown.
Our commitment to you — all of our readers and the communities we serve — traces back to Jan. 16, 1858, when the Rev. Williamson F. Boyakin published the first edition of the Belleville Weekly Democrat.
It continued more than 40 years later, when that fire destroyed the old News-Democrat building on Christmas Eve in 1898 and then-owner Fred J. Kern quickly moved the newspaper to 120 S. Illinois St., our headquarters ever since.
And it continues today, with the selection of our new home on Public Square, by Belleville’s iconic fountain, across from the St. Clair County Building and at the center of the city’s biggest community events.
Yes, we will miss this old place at Lincoln and Illinois, the work home of hundreds of BND employees through the years. Many memories and friendships were born here. Generations of reporters, photographers and editors in our newsrooms in this building chronicled local news and history. Lots of change happened within these walls over the decades. As readers’ needs changed, so did the BND, over and over and over again.
But it is important to remember that the Belleville News-Democrat is so much more than the building at 120 S. Illinois St.
The BND is the local journalism we produce so that readers are informed and equipped to participate in civic life. It’s our devotion to holding public officials accountable and being a watchdog over your tax dollars. It’s our support of community organizations and events and the marketing services we provide to businesses. It’s the team spirit of BND staffers, even in the face of tremendous challenges.
We feel a sense of duty to serve our readers every day, as we have for these past 162 years. Soon we will be doing it from a new home, one that befits a leaner, modern digital media company in 2020. The cavernous square footage and inefficiency of an aging facility built for a print-focused operation no longer make sense.
You may be wondering what will happen to our current building after we move up the street in mid-spring. The simple answer is: I don’t know. The new owner, 120 S. Illinois LLC, said through their lawyer that they aren’t ready to discuss their plans.
As for the BND, we will keep you updated on the move. Right now we are working on a floor plan for our new offices and figuring out how to empty what feels like 121 years worth of stuff in our current headquarters.
As we’ve discussed before, these are challenging times for local media companies like the BND, as we work hard to find the right path to a successful future as a digital news organization. It’s not easy, and we couldn’t do it without your support.
We thank all of you who are cheering us on and supporting local journalism as we make our way back to Public Square, right in the heart of Belleville.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 11:57 AM.
