It looks like the New York Times will borrow about $225 million against the value of its headquarters building:

The Times Company owns 58 percent of the 52-story, 1.5 million-square-foot tower on Eighth Avenue, which was designed by the architect Renzo Piano, and completed last year. The developer Forest City Ratner owns the rest of the building. The Times Company’s portion of the building is not currently mortgaged, and some investors have complained that the company has too much of its capital tied up in that real estate.

The company has two revolving lines of credit, each with a ceiling of $400 million, roughly the amount outstanding on the two combined. One of those lines is set to expire in May, and finding a replacement would be difficult given the economic climate and the company’s worsening finances. Analysts have said for months that selling or borrowing against assets would be the company’s best option for averting a cash flow problem next year.

(emphasis mine)

Let’s calmly take a look at this.

The New York Times dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into a new building in downtown Manhattan, buying it with cash, and now they are concerned about liquidity.

The Times had a building, but for some reason they had to buy a new one, and it had to be in Manhattan, and it had to have everyone in it.

There is no reason, for example, that advertising could not have been put in Brooklyn, or White Plains, or for that matter, Mumbai.

The same goes for the bureaus that cover the other boroughs.

But management wants their shining castle in Manhattan.

This makes me miss Steve Gilliard, because his writing on Salon.com talked about this sort of stupid egotism in detail, and I’m sure that he would have had a field day writing about this.