By Peter Weinberger

After spending 11 years in a business park on north Claremont Boulevard, the COURIER is moving Friday to our new location at 114 Olive St.—the former location of Graves Auto Supply—just south of the railroad tracks in downtown Claremont.

This move almost feels like a return to home, since the COURIER office was located downtown for nearly 100 years. The new office will not only accommodate our changing needs.  It gives us a dedicated building where we can hang our original COURIER sign on the front wall. No more being buried inside a business park.

It also gave us a chance to do much needed cleaning and reorganizing of decades of aged equipment and files. Not to say we are throwing everything out. That means those manual green Olympia typewriters, classic Leitz print enlarger and news racks are coming with us. Moving thousands of original prints is an important task, since much was lost with the previous move.

I know Martin Weinberger is smiling. Back in 2005, we had just spent our 25th year at the 111. S. College Ave. location. Martin was expecting to renegotiate the lease or maybe even purchase the property.

Turns out our landlord passed away before any talks could begin. His wife literally walked into the office months later and announced the property was sold to a developer for luxury condos. Stunned, we were told we had a year to get out.

At the time, I think Martin was more upset with the city, because it felt like we were just sold out to the highest bidder. He just wanted a seat at the table. By 2006, Martin’s health was slowly fading, which only complicated the moving process. But after spending a couple of weeks discussing options and planning, he and I felt the business park option served our unique space needs to publish a newspaper. We moved there in late 2006.

Now over a decade later, we have come full circle, moving to a new location just blocks away from our College Avenue location. And we could not more proud that the property is now home of Courier Place, offering affordable housing for seniors and families.

So how did all this get started? Our esteemed editor Kathryn Dunn heard of this warehouse-type office space opening up for lease. The place really needed work, but as months passed we designed the office specifically to our needs. I’m really excited about our new location and the work everyone has invested in making our new home a great one. That includes Kathryn, who has managed much of the move, down to painting cabinets and designing the office. She had a great idea, and followed through to make it a reality.

Our new landlord Jennie Violet also invested a lot of energy and money making sure our needs were taken care of. I already know we will have a great long-term working relationship.

The entire COURIER staff has been great in staying flexible. Moving is stressful, especially considering we first showed them a dusty warehouse that needed a lot of love. We were never short of help in the moving process, because staffers Tom Smith, Vickie Rosenberg and Mary Rose just jumped in and did wherever was needed.

The COURIER move is going to happen in one day on Friday (today). Please keep in mind our (909) 621-4761 phone number will stay the same. So as you read this week’s paper, please keep in mind that by Monday, April 17, we are going to be living in a new location. At some point, we will have an open house party to celebrate our good fortune.

In the meantime, thanks again to all the people who support the COURIER. We plan on being around for a long time.