By Jamie Folsom
Berthoud Recorder
    
Lehman Printing Center began its first run of the Longmont Times-Call and the Loveland Reporter-Herald Monday. The plant, located on Second Street in Berthoud, now houses the daily printing for the sister papers and employs 79 people, including some Berthoud residents.
   
Berthoud Town Administrator Jim White said the Lehman plant “will ultimately mean the potential for local jobs,” and more immediately, it shows the Town’s “good effort in bringing them to Town.”
   
Other communities also bid on the 62,000-square-foot, $20 million facility. White noted, “It wasn’t a forgone conclusion, and we kept in touch all along the way.”
   
“There was a lot of good work with the Town, the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corporation and some from the county,” White added. “We gave them the welcome mat.”

Among the incentives the Town negotiated were tax rebates on property and use taxes phased in over the first seven years, with a cap of $150,000. The tax breaks also exclude those funds designated for the Berthoud Community Library District and the Berthoud Police Department.

Along with the two local dailies, Lehman prints a large variety of publications that include four weeklies, a Russian language newspaper, and several high school newspapers, including the Berthoud High Maroon Tribune.

An open house and ribbon cutting is scheduled for June 27. Public tours of the facilities will be offered at that time.