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Almost a decade after it first went on the market, the Calgary Herald building has been sold, symbolizing the changing media landscape.
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The imposing brick landmark overlooking Deerfoot Trail and Memorial Drive SE has been purchased by U-Haul Canada Ltd. for $17.25 million, it was announced Wednesday.
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It’s a move that underscores the fact that major newspapers with pedigrees dating back to the 19th century no longer have an editorial presence in Calgary.
U-Haul Canada purchased the 90,000-square-foot Calgary Sun building in 2020, about four years after that paper’s staff joined its onetime Herald newsroom rivals under the Postmedia umbrella.
The move was part of media consolidation in an ever-shrinking newspaper world buffeted by digital realities.
Calgary Herald operations moved from its central location at 7th Avenue and 1st Street SW to the newest 391,000-square-foot site in 1981, then valued at $70 million.
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After the Herald moved its 800 employees to the hilltop landmark located on a railroad line in late 1981, Frank G. Swanson, the publisher at the time, said the new building hosted “the newspaper of the future.”
And so it seemed, with its spacious, modern architecture and employee amenities, including an unprecedented corporate kindergarten.
Its vintage 1979 Goss Metroliner printing presses were decommissioned in November 2014, with the task being outsourced.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the editorial staff left the newsroom and began working remotely from home.
They never came back.
In recent years, the building with its cavernous interior has been used as a set for several television and film productions, such as Jann, Fargo and Wynonna Earp.
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U-Haul Canada will use the building for self-storage and rental trucks, said Bob McDougall, senior vice president of Cresa, the listing agent for Postmedia.
“With compaction, the volume of home storage space is shrinking, so there’s a lot of demand for storage units,” he said.
“The paper warehouse, printing presses and distribution areas (in the Herald building) are easy to convert to self-storage.”
U-Haul is using the former Calgary Sun building for the same purposes, added MacDougall, who also secured that deal.
BKaufmann@postmedia.com
Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn
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