Photo by Mark Leffingwell

The view of the Camera building in downtown Boulder.

The Camera’s owners are putting the newspaper’s downtown Boulder property up for sale, opening the possibility for developers to reinvent one of Pearl Street’s most visible locations.

E.W. Scripps and MediaNews Group — which have an equal ownership of Camera publisher Prairie Mountain Publishing and the newspaper’s two buildings off 11th and Pearl streets — plan to ask “likely investors” for bids Friday, said Al Manzi, Camera president and publisher.

“This decision has nothing to do with the Camera’s health,” Manzi said Thursday.

Operational changes over the past year drove the plans to sell the building, Manzi said. The Camera last month moved its primary printing operations to the Denver Newspaper Agency, which oversees the business operations of the MediaNews-owned Denver Post and the Scripps-owned Rocky Mountain News. Last month, the Camera shut down a smaller press, off North 57th Court in Boulder, and is completing the move of its printing and packaging operations to Denver.

Nearly 50 employees were laid off as a result of those moves. Separately, the Camera laid off nine employees earlier this year in response to challenges within the newspaper industry, namely the decline of classified advertising sales.

“Now we have 77,000 square feet of space we really don’t have a need for,” Manzi said.

About 125 employees — at the Camera and sister publication the Colorado Daily — work in the brick building at 1048 Pearl St. and the adjacent site off Walnut Street. Under current staffing, Manzi said, the newspapers’ employees would ideally occupy a space between 25,000 and 30,000 square feet.

Regardless of any building sale, he said, readers, advertisers and the Camera’s commitment to the community will not be impacted.

Scripps and MediaNews expect multiple offers on the site, Manzi said, because of its “desirable” downtown Boulder locale. During his 2½-year tenure at the helm of the Camera, Manzi said he has received at least 10 unsolicited letters and calls of “strong interest” from interested parties.

On the block

Andrew Freeman, president of local commercial real estate firm Freeman Myre, speculated that the purchaser of the property most likely would be a developer who would convert the sites into a mixed-use of retail and residential.

Freeman guessed that the building could fetch $150 to $200 per square-foot — putting a ballpark purchase price around $12 million to $15 million. But, he added, the price tag would be highly dependent upon the bidding process.

According to Boulder County property records, the assessed value of the property is $6.4 million. In 1997, it was sold for $10.6 million.

The downtown Boulder market appears to be sheltered “at least as of now” from the downturn in the economy, Freeman said. Vacancy rates remain low and prices high, he added.

“From the development standpoint, to get financing, it is a challenging time to do it,” he said. “But by the time someone gets something approved (to develop) here, the financing market will probably be somewhat fixed.

“I just can’t imagine it would be hard to get financing for a prime piece of real estate in downtown Boulder.”

Developer and property owner Bill Reynolds, whose company led the development of the One Boulder Plaza projects, said he expects the property to attract some offers because of its location. However, he added, the weak economy could be making things tighter for some developers.

“Certainly I’m looking at the world differently than even I did six months ago,” he said.

The Camera has operated at the Pearl Street site since 1891. At that time, the newspaper occupied half of the first floor of a two-story, 50-by-90-foot building.

The building grew in size and amenities during the next seven decades until it was razed and replaced by a new building — one with two floors and a basement — in 1963.

The structure constructed in 1963 remains as the eastern part of the current Camera building. In 1973, an addition was made to the west. With that addition came a new press, the mail room and circulation department.

Considering the relatively young age of the current building, the Camera’s property would not qualify for a landmark designation, said Tim Plass, chairman of the Boulder Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board. However, since the property sits in the downtown historic district, the landmarks board would have to approve changes made to the façade, he said.

“I think in terms of the importance to downtown and our historic district, this is one of the key sites, just because of its location along Pearl Street,” Plass said. “It makes it very prominent. I think it will be a really important project and it will be important to get it right.”

Storied past

If a sale were to occur, it is unclear whether newspaper operations — including the editorial, advertising and finance departments — would move. Manzi said his personal goal would be to have the Camera and Colorado Daily continue to work in their current downtown locations through a lease agreement with the new property owner.

If the newspaper were to move from its home of 117 years — longer than any other business in Boulder — it would leave a hole in the downtown business community, Plass said.

“It’s nice to have that diverse use,” of a newspaper downtown, he said. “How many boutique stores and high-end lofts can you have?”

For Plass, the harbinger of Thursday’s news came last fall when he strolled out of the vine-wrapped alleyway to the southwest of the Camera and saw the pieces of the Goss Metro printing press sitting by the Camera’s loading dock.

“What I remember so clearly is smelling the ink, the residue of the ink coming out of the parking lot,” he said. “I thought, well, this is probably the beginning of the end.”

Former Camera editor Laurence Paddock, who grew up with the newspaper when his grandfather bought a share of it in 1892, said he and his family felt it was important to have the paper based at 11th and Pearl because of its proximity to the courthouse and old city hall.

“It’s sad to see it happen the way things are going, but not surprised,” he said. “The Camera’s always been on that corner and I have fond memories ... at the building there before and there now.”

Paddock, his son, and a few others still hold a piece of that history — they saved bricks from the original structure when it was demolished in 1963.

Historian and Camera columnist Silvia Pettem said she was not surprised at the news of the sale, because a lot of empty space was created when the press was removed. And while the current building might not be “particularly significant from an architectural standpoint,” if the Camera offices move, what will be lost is a “sense of place,” she said in an e-mail.

“As (the) Camera’s history columnist, I spend a lot of time reading the old newspapers on microfilm,” she said. “The Camera was at the heart of downtown Boulder, and its heartbeat held the city together.”