The last hammer has swung, the last cable has been attached and two newspaper plants, representing a combined quarter-billion dollars in investment, have reached the finish line.

As our page one stories attest, the new production facilities for The Kansas City (Mo.) Star and Newspaper Agency Corp. in Salt Lake City reveal more than the hefty capital commitment made by their parent firms, Knight Ridder Inc. (soon-to-be McClatchy) and MediaNews Group/Deseret Morning News Publishing Co., respectively.

To that end, the buildings not only reflect the technologies and systems these publishers believe they need to ensure their papers’ short-term survival, but also contain the infrastructure necessary to sustain their existence decades into the future.

But as one walks through the still-gleaming press halls, their printing machines just at the beginning of their long journey producing newspapers, it’s easy to wonder if these plants are the last of a generation.

Yes. They’re cloaked with the software and networking that will enable their production executives to employ all of the latest automation and management information tools available.

Yet their heart remains a printing press; more sophisticated and more efficient than their ‘70s and ‘80s era mechanical counterparts, but still very much an ink-on-paper foundation.

These buildings, sketched and engineered years ago, came about before the steep circulation slides of the past 24 months and before the Web’s ever-changing impact was more fully addressed by news managers.

Publishing executives planning the next generation of newspaper buildings, in Dallas, Albany, N.Y., Naples, Fla., and elsewhere, are undoubtedly examining these facilities and asking themselves where they should pour their resources.

“The newspaper industry needs radical change,” said Ken Harding, a long-time industry consultant and observer who now heads up The Facility Group’s newspaper/print media business group in Denver.

Harding wants publishers to take a page from such innovative companies as FedEx and reinvent how they treat customers as they do business.

That’s the same message given by Mark A. Kaline, Ford Motor Co.’s global media manager, who told attendees at last month’s Web Offset Association meeting that newspapers have to leverage their databases, find out what their readers want, and deliver it, whether it’s electronic or printed.

Helping newspapers identify the future is becoming a potentially lucrative niche for firms such as TFG, Dario Designs and Austin Aecom, all of which have taken steps to beef up their business process optimization practices.

Will that mean the day is coming where a major metro newspaper shuts down its presses for good in favor of building a new facility that includes only those systems necessary for electronic distribution of news and information?

The traditionalist in me shudders to think that might be true.

But tradition isn’t what it used to be any more, either.