Denver Post Building Set to Lose Last Connection With Denver Post

Many longtime Denver residents continue to refer to the edifice at 101 West Colfax as the Denver Post building, even though the paper's journalists haven't worked there for around two years. Now, however, the last major tie between the address and the venerable broadsheet is set to be severed.

Executives with MediaNews Group, the Post's official parent company (it's under the umbrella of Alden Global Capital, a vampiric hedge fund), have continued to work out of the Colfax building even as the paper's newsroom shifted to it's old printing plant, at 5990 Washington Street in Adams County. But according to Tony Mulligan, administrative officer for the Denver Newspaper Guild, space is being cleared at the Washington Street facility for the MNG crew, which is expected to relocate there during the first few months of 2020.

Meanwhile, at 1:30 p.m. today, December 10, the Finance & Governance committee of the Denver City Council is scheduled to consider a resolution that "amends a lease agreement with DP Media Network LLC by adding $9,876,705.71 for a new total of $41,566,052.40 to lease an additional 25,193 square feet of office space on the 11th floor of the Denver Post building...for needed City office space." Note that the Post originally agreed to lease office space to the city back in June 2017.

We've reached out to Bill Reynolds, the Post's general manager and senior vice president of circulation and operations, for more specifics. If and when he gets back to us, we'll update this post.

The MediaNews Group's leap is not the only transition set to take place regarding the Post and its old stomping grounds. The paper is also moving on from a downtown office that was established after the newsroom move.

In May 2017, when staffers were told about the editorial department's new digs, city hall reporter Jon Murray tweeted that "there may be a 'small office' somewhere downtown for (people like me?) w/work needs here." But editor Lee Ann Colacioppo reveals that the plan didn't work out as envisioned.

"Only one person was regularly working out of the downtown space," she reveals via email. "Everyone else had transitioned to the main office."

She adds that "we kept the downtown space so people who needed to be downtown could run in there, but in reality, they weren't. Instead, they tended to go to a coffee shop or just head back to Washington Street."

The Post will abandon the office space as of January 1, 2020 — but the Denver Press Club, at 1330 Glenarm Place, will still be available to Post journos who need a stopping spot. As Colacioppo puts it, "The Press Club is a great alternative because our money can now go to a cause we want to support and it's closer to the courthouse, which makes it handy for one of the main reasons we need to be downtown."

As for the Denver Post building, which at one time housed the joint operations of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, its owner is actually Kayan LLC, an outfit affiliated with New York-based American Properties Inc. Among the local government offices already located there are ones related to the Denver Civil Service Commission — and the Colorado Supreme Court, the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Water Court share a suite there, too.

Meanwhile, Colacioppo thinks her crew has plenty of reasons to feel good about working out of Washington Street rather than the Denver Post building — "free parking, closer to where many people live, no city employment taxes and, contrary to what you hear, it's not at all in Siberia."