Grosse Pointe News leaves The Hill after 72 years

By Pete Waldmeir

Let me be the first to welcome the aged and sometimes even revered Grosse Pointe News to Mack Ave. in Grosse Pointe Woods. For a business thoroughfare that the city council brags is 94 per cent occupied, there are an awful lot of vacant office buildings and blank store fronts there.

According to a very short, very low-key announcement in today's Grosse Pointe News, plus an email acknowledgement from Editor Joe Warner, the 72- year old weekly has closed down operations at its current home at 96 Kercheval.

Operations are slated to reopen on Oct. 1 in a smaller, but more convenient office building at 21316 Mack in the Woods.

The Mack building is a block west of the Sunrise nursing residence and, conveniently, is the last business location on the east side of Mack in Grosse Pointe Woods before you enter St. Clair Shores.

"With a successful St. Clair Shores paper, too, and not owning a large building with very expensive rent," Warner told me in an email late Thursday, "this is a good move for us. Oh, and parking for employees? Wonderful."

The GP News is owned by Robert "Bob" Liggett, a multi-millionaire owner of a network of broadcast facilities across Michigan and elsewhere. Liggett also owns the Warren-based Big Boy, Inc., restaurants and company stores.

He bought the paper in mid-2000's, but the paper's longtime owner, Robert G. "Butch" Edgar refused to sell the Kercheval building, too.

After Edgar died in 2007, his estate sold the 96 Kercheval building to the Talon Group. Liggett's GP News has been a tenant ever since.

The Grosse Pointe News has been on Kercheval since 1940. They started in the old Punch and Judy theater, then moved twice, ending up at 96 Kercheval.