There's a big hole about to appear in downtown Akron, and how and when it will be filled is anyone's guess. And it's likely to have a major impact on the city's core.

It's the Akron Beacon Journal building, a historic sandstone edifice on an East Exchange Street site that occupies an entire city block between South High and South Broadway streets. The building has been the home of the city's daily newspaper since 1938, not to mention the nursery of a 20th-century media empire run by John S. Knight and his family.

The paper has said it will move its staff sometime this summer to another location in downtown Akron, and now the building is up for sale.

With a dramatic tower at the corner of Exchange and High, the building is three stories tall on the west side and two stories tall on the east. The building, constructed in 1929 during an era of classic architecture, has 230,000 square feet of space. By comparison, the city's $42 million Bowery Project has less than 50,000 square feet of mixed-use space and 100 apartments planned. The Law Building's $26 million residential conversion entails about 200,000 square feet.

The Beacon site's size, both as a building and a parcel, might be part of the challenge in finding what comes next, and that's becoming a question on the minds of city officials and downtown advocates.

"That's a great question. That's a big building," said Jerry Fiume, managing partner of SVN Summit Commercial Real Estate Group in Akron.

Fiume said he's been through parts of the building, but not all of it. He's seen enough to know it will be a huge project if a developer comes along with plans to renovate or repurpose it.

"The location is great. It's just the size of the building in this market," he said. "That's going to be tough to repurpose. Maybe what happens with that building is something comparable to what happened with Goodrich, where Canal Place is."

He's referring to an even bigger potential boondoggle turned boom: B.F. Goodrich's plant on South Main Street. It was built out in the early 1990s and now boasts more than 2.5 million square feet of leased office, industrial and storage space.

But Fiume is quick to point out that Canal Place was no overnight success.

"It took a lot of years to get there, and that's probably what's going to happen with this one," he said.

The Beacon building might have another challenge, too: It's very construction. To say "they don't build them like that anymore" would be an understatement in stone. The structure was purpose-built to house a newspaper, including huge printing presses that once pumped out Pulitzer-winning editions of the Akron Beacon Journal. It looks more like a Federal Reserve Bank than any building likely to be put up today.

"From my understanding, some of those floors are incredibly thick. They were built to hold up presses and things. … It's built like a tank, but it might be harder to customize because of that," said Jason Segedy, Akron's director of planning and urban development.

But the entire site is also flexible, in part because the Beacon Journal tore down a parking deck that once dominated much of the block.

"That was probably a good move in terms of the potential reuse of the building, because it gives more possibilities to the site. … And we have a lot of parking nearby, so I think if someone was to reuse the building they could build an expansion where that deck used to be if they needed a different configuration," Segedy said.

The building was previously for lease but is now for sale, said Rick O'Connor, president and CEO of Black Press Media near Vancouver, Canada. Black Press once owned the Beacon Journal, building and all, but sold the paper to GateHouse Media in 2018. It still owns the building.

Black Press decided late last summer to sell the property and has had some interested parties, but no sale to announce yet.

"We've had a couple of almosts, but nothing finalized yet. It's obviously a big piece of property," O'Connor said.

Some interest in the building has come from developers seeking to repurpose it, said Jason Laver, senior vice president of Cushman & Wakefield | Cresco Real Estate in Cleveland and one of the firm's team members who are marketing the property.

Cresco is not listing the building with an asking price, but Laver said he expects it to sell for "about $4 million."

"It's really set up as a single-occupant building, but a lot of the folks we've had through the building are looking at it for mixed use," Laver said.

He said the building's robustness also might be a positive in that it means the structure could support light manufacturing alongside office or residential space.

Residential sites are hot in Akron, and that's attracting some interest in the building as a result, Laver said.

"The city and the mayor are really focused on reurbanization, and there's a lot of pent-up demand for residential downtown. … I know that the Bowery Project has a number of people on the waiting list already, and they're not even at the leasing stage yet. People are just calling with interest. So, that's a good sign," Laver said.

He also noted that because of the building's age, it could qualify for historic tax credits that could help it be redeveloped.

As Fiume suggested, it might take some time for any developer and others to figure out what will become of the building. In the meantime, though, one thing is for sure: The planned move of the Beacon Journal from the building later this year will be a sad milestone for a city with a proud journalistic tradition.

Not that the Beacon still won't be pumping out quality news — it will. But like nearly every daily newspaper in the nation, the size of its staff is greatly diminished from what it was years ago. Newspaper buildings all over the country are too big for their staffs these days. "The city's perspective on the building itself is that it's an incredibly important part of our history." Segedy said. "It's where John S. Knight built his empire, and the Beacon's been very important to Akron for a very long time."

Segedy said he's also optimistic the building will be part of Akron's future, especially if the Bowery and other downtown mixed-use projects are a success and help attract more investment.

"If you get a creative developer, it's amazing what people can do with old buildings," Segedy said.