Digital Page -- Strange Encounters

By Erik Cagle

Senior Editor

Deep down, E.R. Spada must wonder if he has angered the bowling gods. How else can you explain some of the unfortunate circumstances that have befell his Digital Page since converting an old bowling alley into a printing shop in 2002?

A little background first. Digital Page was formed by the entrepreneurial Spada in 1996 as a prepress house located in Albany, NY. Only two years earlier, he had debuted a company called Media Wizard, a graphic design/print brokerage. Spada decided to pursue commercial printing work to complement his prepress/design expertise, so he added a Heidelberg Quickmaster DI 46 for short-run four-color work and a QM 46 for two-color jobs.

Two years later, in 1998, Digital Page acquired Media Wizard to offer clients the best of both entities. The company then boosted its press arsenal with a five-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 52P. A 400VA platesetter was purchased from then-CreoScitex, and an Iris proofing system followed suit during a spending jag at Graph Expo in 1999.

To accommodate the printing operation, Digital Page rented out 3,100 square feet of space, with design and prepress remaining in the original location. Ideally, Spada wanted to acquire an eight-color press and have his entire operation under one roof. That's where Action Lanes came in.

Rolling Into New Facility

Action Lanes was a local bowling alley owned by the Spada family for 30 years—E.R. had worked there as a youngster—but it had ceased operations. In Action Lanes, he saw a wonderful opportunity to realize his goal of a consolidated operation.

"It's a 24,000-square-foot, free-span building with 30-foot ceilings," Spada says." It was right off the main highway. There were no beams, no columns in the building. That allowed us to break it apart and design it to our specs."

The snack bar/lounge was turned into a break room and a huge conference room was added, with a picture window overlooking the entire operation. To maintain the building's history and add flavor, one of the alleys was converted into a 28-foot conference table.

The 24-lane bowling alley wasn't completely eradicated. Opposite the break room stood lanes one through four, making Digital Page likely the only print shop in North America with its own in-house bowling alley. Or, from the bowling enthusiast's point of view, the only alley with its own printing operation.

"We used the lanes mostly for special events—we had a big Christmas party here one year—and open houses," Spada remarks. "In general, our employees' kids were using them when their parents were working late, when school was off or on weekends. They were a cool thing to have for parties."

It wasn't long after that the bizarre stuff began to happen, bringing the kind of action to the former Action Lanes that Spada could have done without.

It all started in December of 2002, Spada's first winter in his new printing home. He received a call from an employee around 9:30 p.m., telling him to come to the plant because water is rapidly coming through the front door. The temperature is below zero, with massive amounts of snow on the ground. How could it be possible?

A water main break at the sidewalk in front of the plant paved—or plowed—the way for copious amounts of non-frozen liquid to enter the plant. Spada rounded up as many people as possible and created a squeegee patrol to fend off the wall of water and protect the office portion of the plant, namely the computers.

Dampened Moods

Meanwhile, city workers struggled frantically to find the water shutoff. "They're in the ground, with torches—kind of like a cartoon—trying to find the shutoff," Spada recalls. "That was a real thrill."

It wasn't the last late-night escapade to come Spada's way. In June of 2004, a local drunkard, angry at his girlfriend and wanting to extract some revenge for reasons left to history (and his cellmate), commandeered a car (perhaps hers) and went for a joy ride.

The objective appeared to be an attempt to jam the car into a cluster of trees next to a baseball park..at which point, presumably, the offending woman would realize the error of her ways and re-embrace her prized beau. Alas, the plans went awry. This baseball field and these trees also neighbor the former Action Lanes.

"So this guy drives the car through the park, pulled a 'Dukes of Hazzard' move and jumped out the window," Spada recounts. "The car went down the hill, missed about 10 trees, hit the curb doing about 40 miles an hour and hit the side of my building."

The Bo Duke knockoff may have missed a host of trees, but the car actually beat the odds and connected with an expansion joint, which allowed it to enter the building. The auto touched down on lanes one and two.

Spada received two phone calls—the first one around 1 a.m. from security, which picked up an alarm at the bowling alley. Spada blew that off, attributing it to a motion sensor. The second call to Spada was made by Albany police.

"They told me there was a car at my building. I said, 'So tow it away,' " Spada recalls. "They responded, 'You don't understand. You need to come down here.' So I drive down there, turn the corner—and I see the tail lights sticking out from the building. I couldn't believe it made it through the wall. The car was airborne and it hit the perfect spot.

"Apparently this guy went down the street to a bar, where he was arrested. He was on parole already. Another genius."

Spada had to mobilize several buddies in the concrete business to drag themselves out of bed and fix the gaping cavity in the wall. It took until 8 a.m. the next morning to finish the job.

"I couldn't leave the wall open. With $5 million worth of equipment inside the plant, we would have become a Wal-Mart for downtown Albany," Spada quips.

Sadly, aside from Spada's wallet, the former bowling alley area took the biggest hit. Rocks and concrete were embedded into the bowling lanes, essentially destroying them. Spada estimates it would have cost about $50,000 to reconstruct the lanes. That wouldn't have been a justifiable purchase for a $5 million-a-year printer.

Final Gutter Balls

In reality, the lanes were doomed for removal, anyhow. They just occupied too much space, especially with Spada's plans to install a new five-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 press with aqueous coater (which was installed this past May) coupled with the desire to relocate some small bindery equipment, giving his 27-employee crew more elbow room in the main portion of the facility. And, in 2004, a six-color Indigo 3050 digital press equipped for variable data printing was installed.

For a growing printer, reserving 4,400 square feet for bowling lanes was not in the cards, especially with a Kodak NexPress slated to be installed later this year. But Spada will always have fond memories of the lane parties. And he is hiring an artist to airbrush a picture of the runaway car over the spot where the actual auto entered the building. So Spada was able to maintain his sense of humor.

But he does wonder about fate?

"The scary part: my father had been in the building since 1953 and owned it since 1971, and nothing ever happened. Nothing," Spada remarks. "I'm there 15 minutes and I have water flooding in and a car flying through the building. When the car came in, I thought, well at least the building didn't explode. And no fires yet. I'll keep my fingers crossed."