Townsend Commercial Printing

Townsend Communications has been providing quality Web offset printing for more than 40 years. The tradition started in 1964 with Hal Townsend buying the Clay County Publishing Co., formerly the Press Dispatch newspapers and grew to include The Clay Dispatch Tribune, The Platte Dispatch Tribune, The Wednesday Magazine, The Raytown Dispatch Tribune and The Liberty Tribune. Because of Townsend’s reputation for quality printing, many catalog and magazine producers requested Townsend to also print their publications. This mix of in-house newspaper and outside catalog and magazine work continued for decades.

In 2004, because of the declining newspaper market, Townsend Communications chose to sell its newspaper group and concentrate on quality, heat-set printing. In concert with the selling of the newspapers, Townsend consolidated manufacturing with Henry Wurst. This new manufacturing partnership increased production efficiencies, expanded printing capacities and added new bindery and mail services for both organizations. The gained efficiencies brought with it higher quality, better customer service and a more competitive rate structure.

All of Townsend’s management and sales teams are now housed under one roof in our South Kansas City location. The new corporate address and phone number is:

20 E. Gregory Blvd.
Kansas City, MO 64114
Phone: 816.361.0616
Fax: 816.276.6800

Customer service and pre-press are located in the Henry Wurst facility at 1331 Saline St., North Kansas City, MO 64116. Our customer service team, with more than 100 years of print experience, remains at the Saline Street location to maintain their close proximity to the manufacturing facility and provide on-site customer service.

In addition to the Commercial Print Group, Townsend has two other divisions. These divisions sell and produce several of their own magazines. The Townsend Specialty Publications division sells and produces At Home in the Northland, a quarterly publication targeted at upscale homeowners in Clay and Platte County; the Performing Arts program guide for five legitimate theatres in the KC area; and KCPT magazine, a semi-monthly publication in conjunction with KCPT, the public television station. Townsend’s TOP (Townsend Outlook Publishing) publishes their own magazines that target college bound high school students. TOP’s publications include College Outlook, the college Reference Guide, Creative Outlook, Transition, In Concert, Eclectic and Achieve, all of which are professional, informative, beneficial and fun for both students, parents and advertisers.