BOULDER, Colo. -- It's been years since the local hardware store and the local drug store were located in downtown Boulder -- though there is a yuppie-style Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy plus several so-called medical marijuana dispenseries. Now the local daily newspaper is ready to leave downtown as the owner of the increasingly slim newspaper sells its building.
At 119 years, the Boulder Daily Camera was downtown's longest-operating business, starting in a late 19th-century two-story brick building that was demolished in the early '60s to make room for another two-story brick building that reflected mid-20th-century modernism.
California-based Karlin Real Estate reportedly shelled out $9 million for the building at 11th and Pearl, small potatoes for an investment firm that claims more than $1 billion in assets. The Camera's own front-page story stated that the company "has ties to billionaire and philantrophist Gary Karlin Michelson." Karlin already owns two other Boulder buildings, but this is the first downtown.
With shrinking revenues and aggressive cost-cutting, the Camera began printing in and shipping from Denver nearly two years ago, also laying off 50 people. Shortly after that, Scripps and MediaNews Group, then joint owners of the venerable paper, put the Boulder building on the market. Two potential buyers materialized and then dematerialized, but the Karlin deal appears to be solid, with the sale completed on Aug. 20.
MediaNews is now the Camera's sole owner. The paper's remaining staff will relocate to 5450 Western Ave., which ironically is on Boulder's east side.