There’s nothing like an office move to inspire the Marie Kondo in all of us. By the time this letter is read, Tucker Publishing Group will be in new offices at 25 N.W. Riverside Drive, known as the IBM Building. For our first 10 years, Tucker Publishing Group magazines were published from the second floor of the historic Old Post Office and Customs House. Then, for more than 10 years, we’ve operated from the second floor of the historic General Cigar Building.
Recently, we felt compelled to create a more streamlined physical workspace, either in our current offices or another Downtown location. We were committed to staying Downtown, though we easily could function from anywhere in the city. After looking at various spaces and considering our current space, we made the decision to move to the three-story, river-facing IBM Building. Again, we’re located on the second floor. We have a bit less square footage, but the space will work harder for us, enabling teams to more closely work together and have increased personal production space. Of course, having a front seat to the river view is nice, too.
Preparing to move was challenging. We’ve had plenty of help. My son Jackson and three high-school-age friends are employed this summer to help us pack, move, and unpack — but that’s not the challenging part. The hard part is dealing with the shear volume of materials we have collected over the years. Naturally, we have lots of magazines — our own archives and titles published by our city magazine peers — to deal with. Old magazines from other cities are recycled; our own library was packed up to be shelved in the new offices. Lucky for us, the prior tenant was a law firm that left behind ample bookshelves, giving us plenty of space to establish our magazine libraries.
We also have accumulated dozens of hardbound books — books meant as printing samples, books arriving unsolicited to our office, and books of all sorts. It was time to make donations to Goodwill or to the Little Library box in my neighborhood.
Packing up, I located quite a few interesting items I had stashed away in the office I’ve been in for 10 years. The first issue of Evansville Living, March/April 2000, with the original mailing label to our former home address was found in my legal bookcase. I also found six issues of Evansville Close-Up, a magazine published in the early 1980s. The July/August 1982 issue (the summer before I went to college) included Butterfield’s, Damien’s, and My Brother’s Place in the Guide to Fine Dining. The November/December 1980 issue featured “Return of the King,” an interview with professional wrestler Jerry Lawler, who frequently appeared at Evansville’s Coliseum on Wednesday nights.
We all are excited about the move — occurring as this magazine is in production. We feel good about the purge — we’ve shed a lot of stuff from the office. I’m happy about the opportunity to create a new workspace in a terrific building along the Ohio River!
Kristen K. Tucker
Publisher & Editor
