Mr. Ferro, right, who made his fortune on the 2006 sale of Click Commerce Inc., revamped the downtown Sun-Times offices to create space for the new Wrapports businesses. He also donated gameroom equipment from his personal collection for an employee breakroom with skeeball, pop-a-shot and foosball games. An employee cafe is stocked with cereal, candy and coffee.

“It was not that expensive, and the board thought it was a very good use of our capital to get the right environment,” Mr. Knight says.

The Sun-Times newsroom is more crowded, with some desks recently replaced by smaller versions to accommodate editors moved from the suburban offices. Wrapports, which has 800 employees, notified the state of Illinois in January that it might eliminate more than 50 of its 400 suburban workers. The consolidation is still in progress; the company declines to say how many employees have moved, quit or were cut.

Editorial employees who provided labor concessions in 2009 when Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc. Chairman and CEO James Tyree, now deceased, bought the company out of bankruptcy aren't seeing any sign in current contract talks that Wrapports management will meet demands to restore those cuts.