The Detroit Media Partnership, business agent for The Detroit News and Free Press, said today the agency and the newspapers plan to move in the next 12 to 18 months to a space more suitable to the digital age.
The media companies' nearly century-old building at 615 W. Lafayette Blvd., as well as its garage and parking lot, will be put up for sale. The companies plan to remain in Detroit - preferably downtown, but Midtown and other areas are not being ruled out, officials said.
"Our current building is historic, but it's been obsolete for decades," Joyce Jenereaux, president of the Detroit Media Partnership, said in an email statement.
"We haven't printed newspapers in this building for more than 40 years, but we're still operating in offices that were, in many cases, converted from pressroom and newsprint storage areas."
The building the two papers and the business unit occupy was the home of the News from 1917 to 1998, when the Free Press left its longtime home at 321 W. Lafayette and moved into a separate space in the building. Both buildings were designed by famed architect Albert Kahn.
The building left behind by the Free Press has been empty since its departure, and it has deteriorated in many ways.
