The Morgan Hill Times has stood firmly in its current location
as a sentry overlooking Third Street, in the heart of downtown for
76 years
– since a time when 12-year-old children could obtain legal
driver’s licenses and prune orchards comprised the valley’s most
lucrative industry.
The Morgan Hill Times has stood firmly in its current location as a sentry overlooking Third Street, in the heart of downtown for 76 years – since a time when 12-year-old children could obtain legal driver’s licenses and prune orchards comprised the valley’s most lucrative industry.
Now, with high-speed trains and massive redevelopment projects on tap downtown, the Times prepares to move its offices further up town after the building landlord refused to renew the Times’ lease, according to publisher Steve Staloch.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Staloch, publisher of the Morgan Hill Times and parent company Mainstreet Media Group. “We had verbally negotiated a renewal of our lease, but the owner reneged at the last minute. And while the new offices provide a more professional environment, our Third Street location has been a landmark of sorts to the Morgan Hill community for 76 years.”
The Morgan Hill Times is moving to its new location, at 17600 Monterey Road, in the Tower office building, starting Dec. 1.
The owner of the Times’ current building has tentative plans to turn the newspaper’s longtime digs into a frozen yogurt shop, perhaps in an effort to return Morgan Hill to what longtime reader Don Kruse recalls as a much more innocent time.
“There was no drugs, no smoking, no cussing,” said Kruse, 77. “There was no drinking, even on graduation night. Ice cream sundae abuse was about the extent of it.” Kruse alluded to the two soda fountains that remained downtown through the 1940s, and were the gathering spots for local youth.
Kruse has read the Times since 1947. He went to Live Oak High School with then-publisher Ralph Slauter’s son. He recalls working as a lift truck operator at the prune dehydrator next door, and visiting the Slauter family who lived in an apartment on the second floor of the Times building.
“The building is still the same,” Kruse said one afternoon last week.
The building at 30 East Third St. was built by G. F. Boutell in 1902, and once housed a bike and machine repair shop. The building used to face Monterey Road, but in 1919 Boutell moved it back to its current site and rotated the structure 90 degrees to face Third Street. The relocation was undertaken about the same time the city replaced its dirt streets and wooden sidewalks with pavement.
Times editor-publisher Robert Couchman purchased the building in 1933, remodeled it and moved the newspaper inside.
The years since then only cover less than three-quarters of the history of the Times, which is believed to be the longest-running business in town. The Times was founded – as the Sun – by George Edes in 1894.
By 1901 a second newspaper, the Times, opened in Morgan Hill and Edes, who had since been appointed local postmaster, decided to merge with the competitor and form the Sun-Times. He soon sold the Sun to George Lynch, who continued to print the local paper as the Morgan Hill Times.
It occupied a number of sites, and ownership changed hands a number of times, until settling into the spot on Third Street.
Kruse remembers a four-page newspaper that was far less politically involved than it is now, and while it reported standard local news such as criminal proceedings and upcoming city council meetings that is expected today, there was a down-home focus on the minutiae of the lives of Morgan Hill’s movers and shakers. “Hokey little stories” about which couple was going to visit their daughter at college, or who celebrated their birthday in the last week brought the community together in a way that newspapers don’t achieve anymore, he said.
“It set a standard for social behavior, and created a cohesive community,” said Kruse, who more recently served on the Times’ editorial board, about three years ago.
Kruse added that another value of the Times was it brought him in touch with the society around him, akin to a “great coming out, like neon lights.”
“My parents were uneducated, and it was a way of finding out what life was supposed to be, learning what society was,” Kruse said. “Before that, all I knew was prune trees.”
Local cops’ traffic enforcement-as-revenue-production was transparent.
“Nobody would go the speed limit, and they would issue as many tickets as they needed to pay the bills that month,” Kruse recalled. The only time in his life Kruse has been pulled over in a traffic stop was in Morgan Hill, when the licensed teenager was stopped merely so the enforcing officer could ensure that “somebody was driving the car,” he laughed.
Times have changed since then, and so has the Times.
Now, Kruse said the newspaper contains substantially more advertisements and photographs, and is “more political than it should be for a community newspaper.” Plus, it has widened its focus to state, regional and sometimes national news.
Tony Villafranca, current owner of the Times building and up-and-coming developer, hopes to pay tribute to the Times’ history with a plaque by the front door in honor of Edes, and label the facade of the building with decorative lettering indicating 30 East Third St. will remain the Times’ building.
Villafranca’s account of recent lease proceedings with the Times suggest a more amicable evacuation. When a five-year written lease expired about a year ago, Villafranca said negotiations for another agreement were hampered by financial complications suffered by both parties, related to the recent recession, and the tenant and landlord went month-to-month for a while.
Although Villafranca was struggling to pay off loans from a massive renovation of 30 East Third St. when he bought it in 2002, he said he reduced the Times’ rent significantly but couldn’t commit to a written lease.
“The restoration of the building was costing so much, but I kept them in here because the Morgan Hill Times has been here so long,” Villafranca said.
Now he hopes to open a yogurt or ice cream shop, possibly with coffee and pastries – though his plans are not finalized, Villafranca said. “I want to keep that family element around,” he said.
To him, one of the most interesting things about the Times’ history was that Edes’ ancestors printed the Boston Gazette in the colonial era, and the revolutionaries who participated in the Boston Tea Party used the Edes’ Gazette office to dress into their disguises the night of the fabled event.
The Times is a drastically different newspaper since that of Kruse’s recollection. Printing, business and circulation operations for the newspaper were consolidated at Mainstreet Media’s headquarters in Gilroy years ago.
Perhaps the biggest change is the growth of electronic influence, as the Times’ online presence has increased steadily in recent years, noted Staloch, who has been publisher since 2004.
“In spite of the economic climate, the newspaper is doing relatively well and is proud to be a part of the community,” Staloch said. “Our online readership is growing at a fascinating pace, and our revenues associated with online initiatives represent a good portion of our overall revenues.”
