Associated Press
After 43 years in Mission Valley, the San Diego Union-Tribune opened its new downtown offices Monday.
Around 275 employees vacated the former location along Interstate 8 near Fashion Valley late last week.
In a commentary posted Friday, U-T Editorial and Opinion Director Matthew Hall reflected on his 15 years working out of the Mission Valley newsroom.
This building was where I spent most of my waking hours for 12 years, met my wife, missed too many dinner dates to count but returned, time and again, to do good work, best I could, in situations that became more trying with the industry’s travails.
It was a good place for a good long time, and isn’t that, after all, what we seek in this life?
Dear 350 Camino de la Reina: Thanks for being a good place to me, to many, for a spell.
That we part on poor terms, your loud, malodorous, dingy interior too much to handle any damn longer, shouldn’t keep those of us who survived to get to this point, who will make it to Monday’s new beginning downtown at 600 B St., from remembering what we liked about you all these years.
You were where we built memories and stories and lives, where the roughest draft of history finally became history itself.
The paper's new 60,000-square-foot home at 600 B St. occupies four floors of a 24-story building. A $40 million, 15-year lease was signed. Its printing operations moved to Los Angeles after Manchester sold the paper to Tribune Publishing, which also owns the Los Angeles Times.
The move comes about a month after NBC7/39 left downtown and returned to Kearny Mesa after an absence of about 15 years.
