Marin IJ Completes Move to San Rafael

Reporters, editors, advertising representatives, circulation personnel and other employees at the Marin Independent Journal are getting settled in at their new home Monday in San Rafael after moving the newspaper operation from Novato over the weekend, according to an IJ report.

For the Novato business community, it means the departure of about 75 employees from the headquarters at Alameda del Prado and the end of a 30-year era of the operation's physical presence in Novato. For San Rafael, it means the return of Marin County's only daily newspaper to the city where it was based before the 1981 move to Novato.

The paper's headquarters is now at 4000 Civic Center Drive, Suite 301, in a complex just east of Highway 101 in Terra Linda. All the old Novato phone numbers will continue to work, the paper said.

The IJ, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in March, is owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group and part of the regional Bay Area News Group, which is undergoing a major consolidation effort and eliminating jobs in the East Bay. The paper is printed at a plant in Concord following the shutdown last year of the Novato press.

The Alameda del Prado complex of three buildings and two parking lots is for sale. The paper's staff moved from the 60,000 square feet in Novato to about 11,000 square feet in Terra Linda.