Price of a Legacy

Buried in the inside pages of today's ProJo: an item on the city of Providence accepting bids on plans for a new administrative office. Among the bidders - the Providence Journal, which is aiming to sell or lease its headquarters to the city.

That the ProJo is looking to unload its Fountain Street headquarters - an attractive, curved bit of brick that mixes plenty of bland, carpeted office space with a regal, if eerily quiet executive suite on the top floor - is not news. But with the industry in decline and the future of local journalism very much in doubt, there is something jarring about seeing a price tag attached to the building. In the ProJo's pages no less.

The number? $9.75 million.