BCN office now in new location

The Banks County News office is now located in the historic old Journal building in Homer.

Mainstreet Newspapers, the parent firm of the News, recently completed a transaction with the Garrison family to swap its current building with the old Journal office, which is located at 953 Historic Homer Highway, about 100 yards south of the current New office.

Along with the News office, the historic old building will house a museum showing how weekly newspapers were published in the past. The museum is slated to open in the fall.

“This is an exciting move for the Banks County News,” said co-publisher Mike Buffington. “The site of the Journal office has been the historic home of Banks County newspapers since 1888 and we view this as something of a coming home for the News.”

An old house next to the historic building was torn down recently to make room for additional parking.

“We hope that when the museum opens, school groups and others will come in for tours and we want to have enough parking to accommodate tour groups in addition to our regular customers,” Buffington said.

The News originally occupied the old bank building in Homer when it began publishing in 1968. In the early 1990s, it moved to its current location in an old barbershop building on Historic Homer Highway.

The Banks County Journal has roots back to 1888 when its predecessor newspapers began publishing. By 1900, the Journal was publishing at the historic site after the name had been changed several times.

The Journal ceased publication in 1987 after Mainstreet Newspapers purchased The Commerce News, which had been publishing the Journal since 1970.

“There’s a lot of history surrounding the early Banks County newspapers and we’ll be talking about that more when the museum opens,” Buffington said.

“We believe this will be something good and positive for the community and will help bring some people off of the four-lane into the historic areas of Banks County,” he said.