Business & Tech

Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. Files for Bankruptcy

End of an era for the Rowe family, for Fredericksburg.

The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company announced today it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"The company filed the petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond together with William Douglas Properties LLC, a related entity that owns a portion of the land upon which the FLS operates parts of its business," the company reported in its newspaper, The Free Lance-Star.

“'The filing isn’t expected to have any immediate effect on the company’s employees, customers, advertisers or vendors," FLS Publisher Nick Cadwallender said in the newspaper.

New York City-based Sandton Capital Partners or an affiliate is named in the article as a potential new owner for FLS. It is reported Sandton holds the loan originally obtained to build Print Innovators, a printing plant on Belman Road in Fredericksburg.  FLS officials had hoped the plant would attract additional commercial jobs. 

"The company took many steps to try to restructure the business to become compliant with the loan covenants," FLS reported. "That included reducing the number of full- and part-time employees from about 454 in 2007 to 303 at the end of 2013."

Employee benefits and hours have also been cut.

“'As you can imagine, this has been a difficult decision for the Rowe family to make, but we believe this is in the best interest of everyone involved,' Cadwallender told FLS employees during a company-wide meeting Thursday morning," the paper reported.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

In addition to The Free Lance-Star, the company's assets include Fredericksburg.com, Freelancestar.com, WFLS, WYSK, WWUZ and WNTX. It also owns real estate and other digital operations, the newspaper said.

Follow Fredericksburg Patch for the latest news and events.
Facebook | Twitter


Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here