Content Bridges

Former Corporate KR Space Filled....With Awe

The Knight Ridder goodbyes keep on coming more than a year after the formal passing.

This week brought new tenants to Knight Ridder Corporate's old space, in the classiest office building in downtown San Jose, still signed as the Knight Ridder Building, because no one wants to buy to take down the expensive signage flying atop the structure.

How good is the space?

Let the Mercury News, erstwhile KR paper, describe it:

"The Knight Ridder space on the 15th floor is among the best, if not the best designed and finished floor space in all of San Jose," said [Dennis Brown]. "The materials that were used, the layout of the floor is all first-rate. It's spectacular."

Granite floors, marble countertops, exquisite woodwork and top-of-the-line furniture await the firm when it moves in sometime in October.

Normally a tenant will spend about $30 a square foot to prepare office space - and maybe double that for high-end space - according to Kevin Crawford, director of corporate services for Ritchie Commercial. Knight Ridder, however, spent on average $120 a square foot when the company moved its headquarters from Miami to San Jose in 1998, he said.

KRD Learns Another Lesson: "Sell More Stuff!"

For Knight Ridder Digital trackers: New sign for KRD in downtown San Jose:

                                                               LOST OUR LEASE!

Not really. But McClatchy, new operators of KRD, or I mean McClatchy Interactive West, have managed to find someone to take over the rest of the 10-year lease on the former brothel at Post and Market. Meanwhile the remaining 40-50 staffers, pushing forward on online classifieds systems ("Catalyst"), will move to smaller and cheaper quarters a couple of blocks away.

You gotta love the symbolism. A once-going journalistic concern is being replaced by a sales incentive company that's growing by leaps and bounds. It's named Xactly, and its CEO was euphoric at getting the great space, complete with touches of old San Jose and new touches of Internet coolness, like the Herman Miller office furniture line.

"It's all about motivating the sales team. To get a company's sales force to sell more stuff," founder Christopher Cabrera said. "This time next year, we'll have 140 people."

Sell more stuff. A simplistic truism of our day, and the one enduring value in times of massive media change.

KR's Sign Lives On

For the fraternity of KR alums, and glad-not-to-bes: Another update on those Knight Ridder signs towering across downtown San Jose, from the site that covers the KR signage better than all others, Content Bridges. Post One. Post Two. This morning's Mercury News reported that Accenture was leaving its Palo Alto digs for the building formerly, but yet still, known as the Knight Ridder building. Accenture is taking 32,000 square feet in the "Class A" building. But as the building owner's policy has it, that's not enough to earn naming privileges. The building's owner, Forest City Commercial Group, is holding out naming for someone taking 60,000 or more square feet -- or someone who will pay a premium just for the naming rights. How long might the signs --1000 sq feet each, 57,000 pounds apiece, flanking the building's top, facing east and west (recalling, perhaps, that at one time the sun never set on the KR empire)?