COEUR d'ALENE - To the 100 or so Press employees, all that banging, clanging and thumping sounds a lot like Christmas music.

The joyful noise comes from construction workers building new Press offices right where the current ones exist, on the northwest corner of Lakeside Avenue and Second Street in downtown Coeur d'Alene.

"From high-end furnishings and design to state-of-the-art equipment, this building will illustrate our commitment to producing a great newspaper well into the future for this wonderful community we live in," said Brad Hagadone, president of Hagadone Communications.

Hagadone said the new facility should be open next summer, and that in the meantime, all current newspaper operations are continuing in the part of the building that faces Lakeside. Editorial, advertising, circulation and business office functions are all accessible from the building entrance just west of Seasons restaurant.

"Our location in downtown Coeur d'Alene puts us in the heart of the community," said Publisher Jim Thompson. "Our new offices will put a face on our business that employees and the community can be very proud of."

Although completely modern, the new Press facility will also harken back to earlier newspaper days.

"We dusted off the blueprints for the original Cd'A Press building and spent most of this year doing our due diligence to come up with a first-class new design and layout," Hagadone said. "We took advantage of my father, Duane, with all his experience in redesigning newspaper plants. He was a major contributor to this project."

Investing in the hometown newspaper isn't new for the Hagadone family. In June 2007, the company opened a multi-million dollar printing, production and storage facility one block north of the newspaper offices.

"That created a centralized, first-class production facility that enables us to produce high-end printing for all of our North Idaho and central Washington newspapers out of one location," Hagadone said. "By moving our production departments over to the new facility, we ended up with a lot of unused square footage in the Cd'A Press building."

The new construction will put every bit of that square footage to good use, said Thompson.

"The new offices, furnishings and equipment will be an incredible environment that matches the needs of today's media company," he said.

Hagadone said the new facilities will help ensure readers and advertisers will be well served.

"We will continue to elevate our products and look forward to a very bright future for this multi-media newspaper company," he said.