Answer Woman: After leaving its historic building, where will Asheville Citizen Times go?

ASHEVILLE – The Asheville Citizen Times will have a new home downtown after 85 years in its historic building. Today’s burning question(s) are a sampling of the dozens our paper received about the future of our staff’s physical location. Finally, we have an answer.

Have other questions for our staff? Email Executive Editor Karen Chávez at KChavez@citizentimes.com and your question could appear in an upcoming column.

Question: (I did) appreciate your article about (Citizen Times) staff moving/relocating. Info was provided as to how to contact staff electronically via web and/or telephone. Yet did not find within the article where the staff is now physically located?

Question: I’m fairly sure it wasn’t an oversight that you left out where your new home will be. It’s a pretty large unanswered question don’t you think?

Question: The one thing I missed in your article about the ACT move is where (it’s) moving to. I hope coverage of that important piece of information will be revealed soon. I hope that Asheville's paper is not abandoning Asheville.

Answer: We were inundated with questions after the news went public that we were leaving our historic downtown offices.

As my editor, Karen Chávez, wrote in a heartfelt column in early March, it was a difficult moment for the paper.

Once, we occupied the entire building at 14 O. Henry Ave. I’ve only been with the paper for 2.5 years, so this story far predates my time here. In recent years we leased an area of the second floor after our parent company Gannett sold the building to local investors in 2018. That lease ended in March.

In April, the Citizen Times signed a new lease with The Collider, an event, coworking and office space in the Wells Fargo building downtown. We will move in this month.

The Citizen Times offices have always been downtown, my editor, Chávez, told me. The paper was founded in 1870, and was once two separate publications. The Asheville Citizen was where the Woolworth building now sits, in an old building that had housed the YMCA, and The Times was in the Jackson Building before joining forces as the Citizen Times.

"I believe a daily newspaper is as much a pillar of democracy as are city and county government and the court systems," Chávez said.

"And so the Citizen Times needs to be downtown. Our staff works at all hours of day, night, weekends and holidays. We need a hub in the heart of the action and this is where we will remain."

The new space is only .2 miles, or an about five-minute walk, from our old offices. The glass-walled rooms overlook Pritchard Park and downtown. I’ve actually covered meetings hosted there (College Street bathroom, anyone? Or downtown bike lanes, if that’s more your speed?) and from their overlook lounge, there’s a view across the tree canopy and city streets to the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond.

From the roof of the Citizen Times building, we also had a view of the mountains — including Mount Pisgah on a clear day — maybe one of the best in downtown Asheville. In our final days there, we gathered with barbecue and cake to watch the sunset. For me, at least, it was the last time from that vantage point.

While leaving the office was painful, many of us are overjoyed at cementing a new location. There’s few things I like more than being able to turn from my desk and ask a question of my colleagues, only a cubicle away.

"The Citizen Times building was super special to me, having worked there for the past two decades. The building famously decked out in the glass blocks popular in architecture when it was built 85 years ago, just felt like a real newspaper building," Chávez said.

"I loved climbing the stairs, which also had that old, gritty, newspaper feel, watching people walking by the Grove Arcade and the trees swaying on O. Henry Avenue from the second-floor newsroom, and being a part of that intense legacy of reporters writing the first drafts of history."

Losing the building as our headquarters has been difficult, she said, emotionally and physically.

"I keep automatically driving there," Chávez said. But what was more important was keeping our newsroom downtown.

Walking downtown is part of my daily routine as the city government reporter. I spend most of my time ping-ponging between City Hall, the Buncombe County Courthouse, the civic center, Pack Memorial Library, county and school admin buildings and wherever I can find Wi-Fi. Perpetually on deadline, I have to remind myself sometimes to stop and enjoy the city around me.

So, no. We’re not abandoning Asheville. And we weren’t before this lease was signed, either. You will continue to find us working from a downtown office. But also at City Hall,among the courthouse’s crowded shelves of paper files, at the site of new developments and illegal Airbnbs, and from the restaurants and bars that also call Asheville home.

Even off the beat, my colleagues and I gather in coffee shops, in each other’s backyards and apartments and breweries (off the clock, I swear) and anywhere else we can go to talk about what it is that we love to do.

The Citizen Times staff can be reached by visiting our Contact Us page, at https://help.citizen-times.com and our Staff Directory page at citizen-times.com/contact/staff/ or emailing news@citizentimes.com.

"I encourage you all to participate in your community through your newspaper, by writing letters to the editor, op-eds, emailing and meeting out in the community with our staff and — if you must — sending us mail through the U.S. Post Office," Chávez said. "However, our offices are not open to the public, and haven't been for several years."

Another popular question from readers is where are the Citizen Times and the Hendersonville Times-News printed? Both papers have been printed in Gastonia for the past five years, Chávez said.

Reach us by mail: P.O. Box 2090, Asheville, NC 28801.

Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Answer Woman: Where will Asheville Citizen Times staff relocate to?