The Charlottesville Newsplex, which operates CBS 19, ABC 16 and Fox 27, has only been in town since 2004, but already they’ve grown too cramped in their current quarters. On April 20, their parent company, Atlanta-based Gray Television, bought a two-acre property at 2307 Hydraulic Rd. for $2.3 million. The site was previously owned by Virginia Telephone and Telegraph Co.
“We just grew a lot faster than we thought we were going to and that’s a good thing,” says Roger Burchett, Newsplex’s general manager. While the Newsplex currently occupies roughly 6,000 square feet at their current location in the Frank Ix Building, they will augment an existing 6,500-square-foot building on the new site with a 12,000-square-foot addition.
 Roger Burchett says that the Charlottesville Newsplex has simply outgrown its current quarters in the Ix Building. Newsplex’s parent company, Gray Television, just bought two acres on Hydraulic Road. |
The plan is to move the entire operation to Hydraulic by early 2009. Burchett says they’ll have among other things a larger, state-of-the-art weather center in the new building. “It’s going to just give us a chance to take advantage of future technology.”
Will the Newsplex departure hamper the redevelopment of the Ix Building, the 250,000-square-foot former factory a few blocks south of the Downtown Mall that still has vast spaces to be redeveloped? “Oh no, not at all,” says Gabe Silverman, a lead Ix developer. “If anything, I love change.”
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“What I’d hope is that some start-up—we’ve had people who were interested in that before—who would have their own TV or their own movie production, because if they were to move out, it’s all set up,” Silverman says. “So it doesn’t affect us one way or another. If anything, I’d say that it gives the next person an opportunity to just grow on the past.”
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